333: Klancy Miller

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. So this mom and daughter come in and she comes over to me and she's like, my kid is really into food. And her daughter was being super shy, but then she starts looking through the book and she sees a recipe for soup jumeau. And her eyes light up and she's like, mom, mom, soup jumeau. And her mom says to me, we're Haitian. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel. Clancy Miller is the author of For the Culture, Phenomenal Black Women and Femmes in Food. It's a fantastic new anthology pairing recipes and reflections that began as a magazine with the same name.

1:09She's also a trained pastry chef, recipe developer, and the author of Cooking Solo, The Fun of Cooking for Yourself. We've long admired Clancy's work, and it's a thrill to have her on the show to talk about making the books she wished she had read coming up in the industry, her love of Paris, and more.

1:33Clancy Miller, this is Tase. Thanks for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. I feel very lucky because at the time of recording, I just saw you at the Cherry Bomb Cooks and Books event on Saturday, and this is Tuesday. So I feel like I'm getting a lot of Clancy time. I am enjoying this moment we're having, our dry cereal eaters united moment. Yes, I did confess to a group of strangers and Clancy that I only eat my cereal dry, and she bravely came forward as another person that feels this way. If you're eating dry cereal, what's your preferred dry cereal? Granola. Yeah. As a child, Cheerios.

2:10Honey Nut Cheerios. As an adult, I still will buy on occasion. Yes. Do you make your own granola? Sometimes, if I'm really feeling ambitious. What's your, like, main flavor profile vibe for the granola? I need a lot of cinnamon. I need a variety of nuts. And I like maple syrup and a little bit of peanut butter. I like a big cluster in my granola. Yes. Same. Same. Which I think this is also probably why we don't need the milk. I think if it was very bitsy and you're just spooning it up, that's kind of different than snacking on a big cluster. One thousand percent. Exactly. So I wanted to talk to you about your conversation at Cooks and Books with Abina and Dr.

2:52Jessica B. Harris, because that's such an amazing lineup of people to get in one room. How did it go? Were there any highlights for you? Well, one highlight was Dr. Jessica B. Harris's advice. Tell your story and tell it well. Somebody asked for advice and she said that and I thought, wow, that's really great advice. The other highlight was the end of the conversation when we were talking about Paris and what makes Paris special to us. And we all have very specific, very special relationships with that city. And I loved hearing Dr. Jessica B. Harris talk about her family in Paris. And I always love to kind of wax prolific about Paris.

3:38So I love that part. In brief, what makes Paris special to you? I have a lot of friends there, a lot of really dear friends. And so I get to see a lot of people when I'm there. I also love the architecture. I love that it's a city, but I never really feel like I'm rushed. You know, I love just sitting in cafes. I'm very cliche touristy there. Like I can pass for Parisian when I speak French, but I really like to, I don't know, be in Café Fleur or like go to Sacré-Cœur and do all these things and eat all the foods and have a croissant every day. Yeah, there are a few things that I don't like about Paris.

4:20I pretty much like everything. Yeah, I was there in July. Actually, I hung out with Abina there, which was really nice. And it's funny because on one level, it kind of reminds me of New York. They're both such walkable cities. There's such a culture of life being on the sidewalk. But when I'm in New York, I have so many things to do, maybe because I don't live in Paris, but I have no plans, not a thought in my head, just kind of like wandering around the city. Totally. Yeah. That's my favorite thing, being a flannel. Oh, well, I love that. And I also wanted to talk to you about your first cookbook, Cooking Solo, which has recently come back into my life as somebody that's been cooking for myself a lot.

4:55And I was wondering if you could maybe like shout out some of the perks of cooking for one, because I think that's often just a much aligned subject. So I think one of the perks is that it's all about you. You know, what do you want? What are you craving? You don't have to think about anybody else. And it's rare that you get to be that selfish, especially when cooking. You know, usually when you're cooking for other people, you have to take a number of things into consideration. So related to that, I think the best part is grocery shopping or going to a farmer's market and just kind of being inspired or following your cravings, that's, I think, the best part of cooking for yourself, assembling something that perfectly matches what you want.

5:44I love that idea. And I think it's kind of hard sometimes to think about what just you want to eat, because I think so many people take up cooking as an act of caretaking or as a necessity. I know that I first was cooking for my roommates and then for my partners. And then sometimes I I don't even or if I just follow my craving, it's a quesadilla every day, you know? Nice, which is great. Yeah. What's wrong with that, I guess? Totally. Yeah, that's allowed. Do you have a default like just for you food? I have two lazy food things just for me. Some kind of fish and a giant salad or pasta with a bunch of vegetables.

6:25Those are my, OK, I'm eating vegetables and something. So I feel like when I do not have imagination and when my time is kind of limited for cooking dinner, those are my go-tos. I love both of those. I think I often buy vegetables and then have them in the fridge and then need to figure out the best way to use all of them up. And I call them opulent salads, like an opulent salad or a veggie pasta are my two main rounds. Totally. Yeah. There used to be this place kind of in between Union Square and Gramercy Park called One Lucky Duck. and they had the best, most massive salads ever. And so sometimes I try to pretend like I am a cook at One Lucky Duck and I'm making myself one of those salads.

7:10I'll try to channel that next time, even though I've never eaten there. I have to imagine what it would be like to be a Lucky Duck. Totally. So you have a background in pastry, which I think is sometimes unusual for people in food. I'm curious how having that pastry background informs the work that you do maybe outside of pastry. Oh, that's a good, good question. I always think of it as just being really nifty when I want to make a dessert on the fly. But I think there's an aspect of being meticulous that comes with being a pastry maker, with being a pastry cook or pastry chef. And so, and I'm a Capricorn.

7:51We already discussed this pre-interview. But, yeah, so there's a level of being methodical and being meticulous that goes hand in hand with making pastry. And so I think that can be helpful with making books, you know, with doing research. But mostly I think about it in terms of food. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think also sometimes people, maybe including myself, who don't often make dessert will think of it as like, oh, that's something that's just out of limits. That is not something I'm going to touch. And when you come from that place, you probably also need to cook savory food just to even fuel yourself.

8:30So maybe there's this idea of expansiveness that like there isn't something that's off limits. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I also think once you have the skills, you can kind of make anything dessert. I don't actually I take that back. Not anything. You can make lots of things dessert. I mean, it's like I feel like there's a chopped network judge somewhere that's saying you can make anything dessert. You know, we're going to get like a bottle of pickles on the table in a second. Totally. Well, you mentioned books before and we are here to talk about your amazing new book for the culture, which I have right in front of me on the desk.

9:04And I was wondering if you could start by just talking about how this original idea came to be. So it's twofold. I first started the magazine For the Culture, a celebration of Black women and femmes and food and wine. I did a crowdfunder for it to publish the first issue. And the first issue came out in 2021. And the idea was to center the voices and stories and expertise of Black women and femmes and food and hospitality. and to have a magazine encompass the gaze of black women and femmes. So stories written by black women, photography and illustrations, all by black women and femmes. And the first issue sold out.

9:55That was in 2021. Sold out in like 24 hours, right? Yeah. I was on the Today Show talking about it. And by the end of the show, the magazine had sold out. Which broad strokes, can you tell me like how many copies that initial run was? I think it was somewhere between three and four thousand. Yeah. Something like that. Today's show numbers. They're going to get past that. Right? Television. Woo. But in any case, running it back to the summer of 2020, George Floyd had just been murdered. And for a brief moment in time, Black people, especially in creative fields, became temporarily very popular.

10:35and my publisher for my first book reached out to me and asked me if I would like to do a book with them and they had a book idea that I wasn't keen on but you know I was working on the first issue of the magazine so I said hey this is the project that I'm working on and I would very much be interested in doing a book that aligns with this that focuses on black women and femmes and food And they bought it, literally. And so that's how it came to be. And again, the mission being to really center the story of Black women and femmes in food. So how did you go about thinking about transitioning a magazine project into a book?

11:19It was actually pretty simple. I wanted to take elements of the magazine and put them in a book. So the magazine has, in the first issue, a number of interviews. I'm a really big fan of the Proust questionnaire. And I like the concept of asking many, many people the same questions because I like to hear the different answers. And so taking that concept, putting it in the book, and then I realized that, you know, they're culinary matriarchs who are no longer living, who I would also like to include in this. And so hence the idea of personal essays by me on Edna Lewis, Lena Richard, B. Smith, Verda Mae Smart-Groesner, and Leah Chase.

12:07And then I asked interviewees if they would contribute recipes because I thought in terms of marketing the book, it would be ideal to market it as a cookbook as a multifaceted cookbook. And then I also feel like the recipes are often kind of part of a person's story in some way. So hence the three parts. Yeah. And I think those three parts are in such great conversation because they show different sides of a personality. Like you can read someone's question or answers and learn about them. And you can also see the recipe that they chose to contribute, maybe like the ingredients that it uses or how it comes together.

12:45And I think that provides this whole other layer of insight into it as well. Totally. So did you request like certain kinds of recipes from certain people or was it whatever they wanted? Yeah, it was whatever they wanted. I felt so grateful that anyone would take their time and talk with me for this book. So literally anything they wanted to contribute, I was just like, yes, please. And thank you. But also the people that you chose, you know, some people work in the drink space, so it's kind of likely that they would contribute that kind of recipe or a dessert. So there is a nice balance, I think, in the recipes that ended up in it.

13:20Yeah, totally. I mean, I think at a certain point I may have been secretly hoping for like a little more savory or, you know, a couple of desserts would be great. But yeah, I think all in all it's a decent balance of savory, sweet beverages, snacks, meals. I'm resisting the urge to ask you the annoying interviewee question, which is what are your favorite recipes? So instead, I'm gonna ask you, what are the recipes from the book that you have been revisiting or cooking recently? Okay, so one recipe has been particularly useful in the promotion of this book and celebrating this book. It's the shrimp cassava balls by Anya Peters.

14:03It's such a great kind of finger food for cocktail parties or, you know, at the beginning of a dinner party. And so at almost every book event that I've had over the past couple of months, there have been shrimp cassava balls and they're delicious. It's an amazing thing to have on repeat. Right? So good. I did a dinner the other night for 250 people And the sweet potato recipe by Rahana Basret Martinez was fantastic. The red cabbage salad by Adrian Cheatham, fantastic. What else did we do? We did a carrot cake. Oh, the rice and peas by Sarah Thompson. Those have all been in heavy rotation in like the parties that I've had over the past few months.

14:57Those are all so great. And I think that as an editor with any anthology, I feel this kind of nervousness about like making trying to make an exhaustive list and leaving someone out or maybe even like the fact that you can't make an exhaustive list. But I think your contributor list is so phenomenal. And I'm curious how you came about pulling everyone together. So, you know, again, the point of the book is to be a resource. Right. Like, I think I say this in my introduction that I wanted to write this book for my 21-year-old self who was just embarking into the world of food and totally unaware of what the options were.

15:36I thought it was just chef, maybe pastry chef, restaurant owner, bartender. Like, that was it when I was 21. Um, so I wanted to have a group of people that truly represented the vast options in the world of food. And so that was one part. Then I wanted to have a group that represented the diaspora, you know, so there are people from throughout the US, there are people from the Caribbean, there are people from West Africa, there are people based in Europe. um I did I also wanted different generations of people so Rohana I believe is the youngest person in the book she's 17 18 yeah I believe 18 you know so we've got Gen Z through I don't know the silent generation so it's multi-generational and then you know there are people in the book who I have admired from afar and never really met in real life and then you know I'm on Instagram So there are people I've been following and just like, oh, I'd love to have a conversation with her.

16:44Or there are people who I've read about and just kind of written a note and kind of I have a secret list of people I'd like to meet. So that's kind of how I did it. And then there are a few friends in the book as well who I really wanted to interview. And, yeah, that's kind of how I compiled it. And I didn't want too many people. Like I didn't want 100 people because I knew I was going to have to interview them. So I wanted a robust number under the number 100. And 66 seemed like a good number. That's a lot of work. So it is such a great lineup. And as you mentioned, I'm sure a lot of the people you have known or worked with before.

17:26I'm wondering if you want to shout out maybe one or two people that this project gave you the opportunity to talk with that you were especially excited about. um so i had never had a conversation with aisha curry before oh my god me either and she was so sweet and lovely to talk with and that was really exciting um also i've been a fan of carla hall ever since she was on top chef as a contestant and so getting to talk with her was such a joy. And she's also incredibly lovely. Everyone in the book is amazing. But in terms of people who, wow, I never thought I'd actually get to have a conversation with you.

18:08And here we are. Those two people were, you know, happy surprises. Yeah, those are so great to shout out. And going back to your intro, talking about how you were writing the book that you wish your younger self could have had. I'm curious if there are any pieces of wisdom from the book that you think young Clancy would have especially needed to hear? I don't think it's something that I would have totally understood as like 20-something me, but the idea that there is such a thing as working too hard. And there's something that Kia Damone said in the book that really stuck with me and sticks with me.

18:47I literally think of it probably once a week. And she's talking about the fact of, I think I asked her, what do you do when you're in a creative rut? And she says, when I'm in a creative rut, it's usually because I'm not paying attention to my life. Like I'm not living my life. They're, you know, piles of dirty clothes or dirty dishes, or I haven't seen a friend or friends for weeks, or I haven't just gone for out for ice cream or I had, you know, she's talking about enjoying life, you know, like creating your home in such a way that it is enjoyable, but also enjoying your life, seeing your friends, going for a walk in the park, going to the movies.

19:32And I regularly have to remind myself now sometimes just to enjoy life, you know, don't have an agenda, just like go out to dinner, just go see that movie you've been wanting to see, just go see a play. and that kind of does reinvigorate creative juices like just attending to the balance of life attending to your fuller self and so while I don't think I would have understood that as a 21 year old I was having a lot of fun but just it's like good to keep in mind like oh one day you might overwork yourself. Like make sure you're having fun and attending to yourself. Yeah, I maybe needed to hear that right now.

20:18I think whenever I feel like I'm in a creative rut, I realized that I just don't have any empty space in my head. Like whenever I can't come up with even stupid, I think stupid ideas are the first good ideas that I have. But when those can't come to mind, I'm like, oh, I need to go to a museum or go to yoga or do anything where I have no thoughts so that there's space for a new thought. Because sometimes there's just no space at all. Totes. Totes. Saying totes more often also maybe helps with creative juices. Absolutely. Yes. Hence my use of it. If you were going to do something to live life, what would one of those activities be?

20:55I have literally in my head been making a list of exhibitions I need to get to because I haven't been to a museum for a minute. I actually had actually kind of take that back. for the early part of the book tour, I was at Moad in San Francisco, but I haven't been to a museum just to wander around for a while. So museum, a show on Broadway. Oh, I'm going to a concert tonight. I'm going to go see Nick Hakeem. Wait, I'm so jealous. I'm so obsessed. I go to every concert of his in New York. Where is it going to be? It's going to be at the Blue Note. So that's going to be special. Oh, that's really good.

21:35Yeah. Oh, I'm so jealous. I love that. And speaking of the book tour, I'd love to know what it's been like to be gathering around the book together because making a book, this book is so collaborative, but I'm sure there are also a lot of solitary moments in the Google Docs. So how has the book tour been? The book tour has been amazing. One very special moment was in Philadelphia at Honeysuckle Provisions. of a mother came in with her nine-year-old and she tells me there was a pop-up like Sibyl and Omar who own Honeysuckle had a pop-up with Sarah Thompson and they made this awesome oxtail biscuit sandwich and I was there to sign books and so this mom and daughter come in and she comes over to me and she's like my kid is really into food and her daughter was being super shy but then she starts looking through the book and she sees a recipe for soup jumu and her eyes light up and she's like, mom, mom, soup jumu.

22:33And her mom says to me, we're Haitian. And so I was just in soup jumu is a very important Haitian soup. And I was just like, this is a full circle moment. And this is exactly what, why I wrote this book. I wanted little kids to see reflections of themselves in this food and in these stories. And so I was just like, oh my gosh, mission accomplished. And there have been so many moments of people just really feeling seen by the book or appreciating the book. And it's generally been very fun because I get to go to places I haven't been to. I had never been to LA. It was my first trip to LA. And like a lot of people showed up at the Ace Hotel and at Now serving and it was such a great vibe.

23:21Like every event has been a really sweet, special vibe. So I've been happy. I love hearing that, although I'm not surprised. I think that like so many people talk about like wanting to create a community around the work that they do. And this work is coming out of a community that already exists. So I think to like have that manifestation of being able to see people and share their work and then celebrate it is just such a lovely full circle moment. Thanks. It feels very good. It feels good. I'm from L.A., so I have to ask about how your L.A. trip was. OMG. I had such a great time. Don't make fun.

23:57I became obsessed with Erwan smoothies. Oh, what's your smoothie order? Okay, so I got the Miranda Kerr, the blue. It's I would call it the blue one. It's like blue and purple. Yeah. And then I got the Malibu mango. I was so obsessed with Miranda Kerr that I went back for that twice. And then on my last day or second to last day, I just had the Mango Malibu because I had just gone to Malibu. You had to. Yeah, it felt important. I loved L.A. I had such a great time. Yeah. I have never had either of these smoothies, but I'm going to be in L.A. soon. So I think I'll get the blue one. Yeah. In your honor.

24:37What do you like about it? Is it that amazing kind of fluffy texture? It's the I think it's the perfect consistency. It is a proper smoothie consistency, meaning that it's thick, but not too thick. I also, I think both of the options I got are non-dairy. Even though I can do dairy, I like a non-dairy smoothie. Me too. We already discussed milk. Off mic or maybe on. No, dry cereal. We did talk about this. Dry cereal, exactly. So, you know, I'm not a regular milk fan. So this, whatever, for that reason, it was important to do non-dairy and the colors are awesome. And it also, I like to walk around in a make-believe world sometimes where I'm like, ooh, this smoothie is so healthy.

25:24I'm getting so many vitamins. So it just, you know, it fit in with my little delusional fantasies about smoothies. I like that. I think, you know, when people come to LA, there's a really specific view of the city sometimes. And Erewhon definitely plays into that. So as someone from the city, whenever people talk about Erewhon, I feel this kind of tension between, because I also love going to Erewhon and like disassociating in the beverage aisle. And I spend like 20 minutes picking out a kombucha. That's just not the kind of life I lead elsewhere. And obviously like that's not the kind of life that everybody leads in LA.

25:58But I do think LA was kind of built as a fantasy city in some ways. So to go and live your LA fantasy is a very LA thing to do. Yeah. I went to other places and did other things too. I'm sure. Yeah. But I really, and the word you use, disassociating, is perfect because I just wandered the aisles. I'm sure people thought I was a shoplifter. And I told people who appeared to be employees, I was like, I've never been here and I'm just browsing because it's amazing. Yeah. I can't say I would recommend this, but if you ever go to Erwan Stone, you will like never leave. Like you could just get trapped looking at Manuka honey and being like, do I need$70 honey?

26:35Maybe. No, maybe. I won't say no for everyone. For me personally, it was not what I needed. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Smoothies did it for me. I was happy. I love that the smoothies have the Clancy sign off. And to talk about like smoothies, they're kind of dessert-like and the recipe that you have in the book is a dessert. I'm wondering like how you decided which recipe to contribute because I imagine there must have been a lot of options? So I felt like for my story, it made sense to contribute desserts. First of all, I am a dessert person. I love sweets. Second of all, I'm trained as a pastry chef, pastry cook.

27:15And so I and, you know, I spent time in Paris and Salon de Thé and Patisserie and Taivon. So I wanted to share a Taivon recipe that I kind of tweaked. And can you just explain what a Taivon is? Oh yeah. Taivant is the restaurant where I did my apprenticeship following Le Corombleu in Paris. And so I worked in the pastry kitchen. At the time, Taivant was a three-star Michelin restaurant. It's not far from the Champs -Élysées. It's near the Arc de Triomphe. And the pastry kitchen was amazing. I had a really wonderful time and I learned all these really cool, super-duper fancy desserts. But one of the simpler desserts we made was this chestnut cake.

28:03In France, people love chestnuts and eat a lot of them, especially in the fall and winter. And so this cake is probably the simplest cake I've ever made. It's chestnut puree, eggs, and melted butter. That's it. And you just bake it. We used to, sometimes we would have it like slightly drenched in rum. and with I think it was like a goat cheese ice cream. I serve it just like with melted chocolate on top and ice cream. And it's really delicious and easy. And so I have that in the book and then a raspberry shortcake, which is kind of a twist on one of my recipes and cooking solo, like a recipe for one.