377: Last Night a Sheet Pan Saved My Life with Olga Massov & Sanaë Lemoine

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. But we wanted a book that had, you know, breakfasts, lunches, snacks, appetizers, desserts, because we really felt like it is such a versatile cooking tool. And it's so democratic and it's so inexpensive. You can store it in even the tiniest of kitchens. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59Olga Mesov and Sinai Lamon are the authors of Hot Sheet, a delightful new cookbook dedicated to the wide world of possibilities unlocked with the humble sheet pan. They've conjured up seriously smart recipes for breakfast, starters, dinners, and desserts, and today they're going deep on their process for developing creative yet accessible sheet pan staples.

1:28Olga and Sanai, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having us. The thank you in unison. It's so fun. Two people in the studio together. And today is your book publication day, which is extra fun to catch you. And I believe there's a party happening later. Can you tell me what's going to be served at the party? Lots of small bites from the cookbook. there's this really delicious focaccia that we'll be serving with a soy sauce olive oil dip, brownies with mint cream, this chocolate layer cake with mascarpone and cherries, roasted dates stuffed with blue cheese, and shortbread.

2:06Maybe I'm forgetting something. I feel like there's one more, but I can't think of it. Oh, a scallion cheddar tart with honey. And they're all being made on sheet trays. How many sheet trays do you now own that are being used for this production? Well, we're using all of the Little Egg sheet pans, which are full sheet pans. So it's very exciting. I definitely could not finish full sheet pan in my tiny rental oven. So that's been fun to use those. And Tanai took the bulk of cooking everything for the party since I came from DC. So I'm infinitely grateful for the fact that you were able to do this.

2:39Well, it's really thanks to our friend Tanya, who does pastries at Little Egg. And she has been baking since yesterday. And yeah, it's going to be delicious. Yeah, we all love Tanya. We all love sheet trays. It's so fun to get to talk about them with you today. And I love that you're calling out the full sheet tray because I don't think I've ever had an oven that could fit one that does seem like a suburban or maybe like a restaurant kind of flex. It's definitely a restaurant flex because you most home kitchens, they'll fit a half sheet comfortably, but a full sheet one is like really, really big.

3:12It's like 36 inches, I think, long. I was trying to wrap one in plastic yesterday and it was so unwieldy. It's really, it's not practical for a home cook. So we're here to talk about sheet trays. Olga, I'm wondering if you could tell me about where the idea for this cookbook came from, because I believe it started with you. Sure. Yeah. So I started working at the Washington Post around 2019 and in early 2020, as you all remember, the pandemic started and we were all forced into our homes and nobody was coming over and nobody was having people over and nobody was entertaining and none of that. It was around that summer that our team at The Post, we were thinking about the holidays in general and we were trying to think of a way to do these holidays, specifically Thanksgiving, in a way that was genuine and honest and thoughtful to our readers and also cognizant of the fact that we were not going to have big tables full of people that were going to be just boisterous and numerous and plentiful.

4:20And Thanksgiving happens to be my favorite holiday. And it's really meaningful to me for so many reasons. But one of them is that there's no gift giving. There's no consumerism around it. You just kind of get together and eat and appreciate each other's company and are grateful for that. I was really, really grumpy around the fact that I wasn't able to host my family and friends for Thanksgiving, which I do every year. And I kind of put my foot down and sort of in this like throwaway line said, well, no one's taking Thanksgiving away from me. I'm just going to do it all on a sheet pan. I'm going to like roast the duck and roast some things and, you know, throw a vegetable and throw a starch.

4:56And I'm doing that. And, you know, maybe we should just do the entire Thanksgiving on a sheet pan. And my boss was like, oh, that's a great idea. Let's do that. And I thought, really? That's always how you get caught in a pitch meeting is you say something is a throwaway and then it's your actual assignment. That's exactly. And so then our whole team did one. We did five separate, you know, different approaches. We had a turkey breast. We had chicken. We had a vegetarian one. We had my duck. And there was one more that I'm not thinking of. And then after that, I started thinking about what else can I do on a sheet pan that like, I'm really curious now because I can make a really fancy meal on a sheet pan.

5:32And so can I make a, you know, can I make a giant frittata on a sheet pan? Yes, I can. Can I make a pancake without flipping them and everybody eats at the same time? Sure, I can. And I started talking to Sanai about it. And she said, you know, I love this idea. Let me send you, I was putting together a spreadsheet of recipes that I thought would be fun to experiment with. And she started putting so many ideas down that I thought, well, there's no way. And you even said at some points, and I like, oh, you can take your ideas. You don't have to credit me. And I thought that that doesn't seem right to me.

6:03And so I mustered enough courage and said to Sanai, would you like to write a cookbook with me? Kind of really, it was like I asked you out on a date and I was really nervous that you would say no. And then I would just have to like sad, be sad and, you know, write it myself. But you said yes. So. So Sanai, I'm curious, what was your experience like working with sheet pans before Olga approached you? I feel like they're kind of an interesting tool in a kitchen and that like they both are so multi-purpose and a huge core part of restaurants. And at the same time, a lot of the like sheet pan cooking canon is kind of like a lot of casseroles maybe or something that's like not very specific.

6:41Yeah, I came to sheet pans pretty late compared to Olga, I think, because I didn't grow up with them. My parents never cooked with them. They're still not really cooking with them, despite me trying to persuade them. Um, but I, I first encountered the sheet pan in the test kitchen of a, of a food startup called Marley Spoon or now Martha and Marley Spoon. Um, and I immediately fell in love with sheet pan cooking for its ease and how I could just throw so many different things on one surface and cook it at the same time. And so when Olga came to me with this idea, I think I was just a couple of years out of working in the test kitchen and I had so many ideas that were still fresh in my mind, recipes that I had developed or just things that I cooked on a daily basis.

7:29And so I did start contributing my ideas. And truly, like the last thing on my mind was to write a cookbook. So when Olga asked me to write the book together, I think I didn't take it seriously at first. It wasn't until we were writing the proposal that I realized, oh, this is actually maybe a book. And then we sold it. And then, you know, we had to write it, which was both terrifying and very exciting. Right. And what did both of you want to bring to kind of the canon of sheet pan cooking that's been enshrined in some of these blogs and cookbooks that are out there? One of the things that we both looked at before we wrote our proposal is we're former cookbook editors and we were thinking like cookbook editors, we were thinking, you know, when you get a proposal as a cookbook editor, you're looking for reasons to say no.

8:18Not because you're a negative person, but you're trying to figure out if there's something like this in the market, if something like this has any place or if it's going to fill a hole that needs to be, you know, needs to be filled. I thought to myself at first, and I think we had this conversation, like surely there are sheet pan cookbooks out there. And we started looking at them and some of them had, you know, like 50 recipes and they were just savory. Some of them were just focused on sweets. And we were thinking like we want a comprehensive soup to nuts. Oh, there's no soup recipe in our book.

8:51But maybe some toasted nuts. Definitely some toasted nuts. But we wanted a book that had, you know, breakfasts, lunches, snacks, appetizers, desserts, because we really felt like it is such a versatile cooking tool. And it's so democratic and it's so inexpensive. You can store it in even the tiniest of kitchens. You can scrub it. And, you know, even if it doesn't look shiny and new, it's still going to deliver years and years and years of wonderful meals. And so it felt like that didn't exist yet. Yeah, we really wanted to expand the range of what we were seeing. So recipes that could be really simple weeknight dinners, but also recipes that you could make for entertaining.

9:35So some will feel like a little more elegant and elevated while always being accessible. And we wanted to show a reader how you could make all kinds of recipes in a sheet pan. Of course, like you could make maybe this recipe in another utensil. But if you have a small kitchen like I do in Brooklyn, and you're just maybe building your kitchen utensils, and you want to only own a couple of items, this book, essentially, if you have two half sheet pans and one quarter sheet pan, you can make every recipe. recipe in the book from a really gorgeous cake for a birthday to like your simple chicken and vegetables dinner to a pancake, as Olga said earlier.

10:22And so we just wanted this book to truly kind of work for any occasion and any cook. We wanted it to be interesting and doable for people who were just starting out to cook, people who were in college and had limited income, People who might be older and have mobility issues, right, and cannot physically pick up a Dutch oven. So from that standpoint, we wanted it to be really approachable and appealing to so many different groups that that's kind of what we were guided by. And we felt like there wasn't something like this out there. And we brought such different sensibilities to it, although we are so excited to eat each other's food and we have very much the same palate when it comes to things that excite us.

11:04But we really brought your background into it in mind. Yeah, I think that really comes across in the book. And I love hearing about how you think about the array of recipes from like your cookbook editor background. I'm curious from the recipe developer standpoint, what do you see are like the biggest perks and limitations of making a sheet pan only cookbook? Was there something that you were trying to figure out that like you couldn't actually develop? Like where was the limit of what can be sheet panned? Yeah, I mean, there are definitely recipes that I thought would work really well in a sheet pan and didn't.

11:35And one thing that Olga and I were very careful about from the beginning is that we weren't trying to fit everything on a sheet pan. And I don't mean just like ingredients, but we didn't want a recipe that required you to use four different sheet pans and you're bringing them in and out of the oven all the time. And, you know, you're like trying to essentially make soup or boil pasta in a sheet pan. Like that wasn't the point of the book. There are certain recipes that work so much better on the stovetop. And so we didn't want to kind of bend backwards or like bend the recipe backwards so it would work for a sheet pan.

12:06For me, the biggest challenge as a recipe developer was the oven. The fact that every single recipe that we were developing, aside from one recipe, requires your oven. And I was constantly thinking about our audience and what kinds of ovens they might have. And I've lived in various apartments in New York City, always rented. I've had no control over the oven that I have. I was worried as I was working on these recipes that they would just be at like the whimsy of another person's oven. And that's something that we built into the book, like making sure that we've always included very clear visual indicators, a time range that we have a robust introduction where we talk about the importance of an oven thermometer, which is so affordable and easy to get.

12:55And so I feel like in that way, the book and recipes needed like a little extra padding. And then, you know, the other thing was we had to kind of call it at some point, you know, when the recipe wasn't really working. And I had this idea at one point to do a chana masala and I really wanted to see how it goes. And honestly, I could not get it to where I wanted it. And I couldn't figure out why anybody would want to make it this way. It was so persnickety and it wasn't that flavorful. And because I was thinking, like, what if you can't like lift a big heavy pot and you want to like, can you make it easier with fewer steps?

13:37And it just wasn't coming together. And after, you know, testing it ad nauseum, I kind of threw in the towel and I said, you know, we're not going to do that. But at the same time, the sheet pan chili actually did manage to come together and was really good and worked out. And I had somebody test it who had like shoulder surgery within like a year, I think. And they said that it was something that was much more doable than having to like lift a really heavy pan. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And even when you say like sheet pan chili to me, I feel like I have this initial moment where I'm like, how do you have enough liquid in a sheet pan to make a chili?

14:14Like, how does that even come together? Yeah. Well, you use less liquid. You wind up using a lot less. But also you wind up cooking some of it down. And then to make sure it doesn't cook down all the way, you use another sheet pan to create a lid. So or you could use foil if you're just a one sheet pan household. Wow. OK, I like the sheet pan lid. Are there any other like secondary uses for sheet pans that you guys encountered during the recipe development process? An umbrella for Sinai. I've done this before, actually, but I did the sheet pan stupidly, the like concave side up. So the liquid was just collecting in the sheet pan.

14:52Then I had to dump it out. I imagine you probably used the flat side. I did. But that's I love that you did that. Well, I mean, why? Like in hindsight, I think it's because you could hold it with your fingers and it just felt kind of fun. and then it just was wet for everyone. Well, that's the right side up too. It's how you use it when you're cooking for the most part. Yeah. So I think intuitively it makes sense. Yeah, but you used it like to run across town or something? Yeah, I was trying to hop in a cab and there was this crazy rainstorm and I had brought a tart actually on a sheet pan to this dinner party and then we ate the tart and then I had this empty sheet pan and no umbrella.

15:30And so it was kind of perfect. It served both purposes that evening. I really love pressing a second sheet pan right side up. Olga has this really terrific quesadilla recipe in the book that requires... And the milfeuille. And the milfeuille as well. So for the milfeuille, you're pressing a second sheet pan or just placing it on top of the puff pastry so that it doesn't rise too much. And then for the quesadilla, it creates a really lovely crust on the top. Makes both sides really crispy. Oh, without having to flip it. Yeah. Yeah. Genius. Is that how the pancake works? The best thing about the sheet pan quesadilla and the pancake is that everybody eats at the same time.

16:11Because, you know, when you're the pancake maker or a quesadilla maker, you inevitably, as the cook who's making those things, eat last. And you're eating like a sad quesadilla that was the first quesadilla that was made that nobody ate because now it's cold and the cheese is like really rubbery. So nobody has to suffer with the rubbery cheese quesadilla. You're not like locked into the stove. That makes a lot of sense. No, you sit down like we do this on a weeknight. It's so easy because I can throw it in the oven and then I can sit and help my kid with his homework or, you know, talk to my husband about like how crazy our work days were or, you know, something like there's always something to do around the house.

16:48So it does allow for a really, really quick and very effortless meal on a weeknight. I like that. And we talked a little bit about how you were kind of locked into using an oven for all of these recipes. Did you say that you can start a recipe on the stove in a pan and then transfer it to a sheet pan? Or does everything have to be only cooked in a sheet pan? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question because we really wanted these recipes to be mostly sheet pan cooking. We wanted to avoid having to use a pot. There are a couple of exceptions, but we thought about them very, very carefully. There's a mac and cheese recipe, which is absolutely delicious.

17:27It's one of my favorite mac and cheese recipes. We call them all the crispy bits mac and cheese because it has so many crispy bits because that's the best part to me about mac and cheese. I did try making it without cooking the noodles on the stovetop the first time around, but it was so much better and actually easier. Like it made sense to first cook the noodles on the stove and then transfer them onto the sheet. And then you're still getting that incredible like wide surface and all the crispy bits and edges. So I think it is like truly a recipe where the sheet pan shines, but there's a little bit of stovetop cooking.

18:00But I think everyone can boil pasta. That's not too challenging. I think that also counts because a baked mac and cheese where you are transferring it into a Pyrex or some kind of other dish to get that crispy effect is already something that is like in the pantheon of cooking. So you're not necessarily complicating the recipe further. You're just kind of working in a specific realm of baked pasta. There were just a couple like boiling ramen noodles for a few minutes or using leftover rice, you know, that would have required making rice at some point. But aside from those recipes, everything else, or, you know, maybe we're asking you to melt some butter or chocolate, you know, on the stove.

18:37Right. And also, you know, there's a salad dressing that you make, but that doesn't require generating heat. But we didn't want it to be a bait and switch. So we had these weekly calls with one another, and we would talk about the pros and cons of each recipe. And if it didn't require complete sheet pan cooking, if it required another vessel and another heat source, was that truly necessary? Did the recipe belong? And is there a way to make it better without the sheet pan? And so if those kinds of things aligned, if there was a Venn diagram, then we kind of moved on. But we didn't want it to be gimmicky.

19:09We didn't want people to say, well, it says sheet pan, but I have to do a million other things with other appliances. Yeah, we wanted it to be so simple. And Olga and I are both, I think, in certain ways, lazy cooks. I mean, I describe myself that way. I'm a very lazy cook, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So like I don't want to have to sear a steak and then, you know, put it on a sheet pan and throw it in the oven. Like that doesn't really make sense for this book. Yeah, definitely. So I'm wondering if we can talk about the brown stuff that is all over my sheet pans right now. Like, have you guys figured out a solution for that?

19:39So I love the brown stuff because the brown stuff to me is like all these memories. It's like an heirloom quality to it. Olga has her hands like pressed to her heart right now as she's talking about her love for the brown stuff on sheet pans. It's genuine. I really do. I see when people say, oh, I have this sheet pan, but it's really old and then like show it to me. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh, it's so beautiful. To me, the brown stuff, I almost think of it as a patina that you have like when you use a cast iron a lot. Maybe that's not correct, actually. Like a seasoning. Like a seasoning. I don't know if that's scientifically correct.

20:13So somebody feel free to fact check me on this. But aesthetically, it makes me really happy to see it because to me, it's like something I know that I've used it. It's like when you open up, you know, your cookbook to that page that has all the fingerprints and like the pages bent and like, you know, maybe you crossed out an ingredient and wrote another ingredient on top of it because you love it so much that you've kind of made it yours through time. To me, that's really great. But having said that, if you're the kind of person that wants a pristine sheet pan 100 % of the time, there are ways with a little bit of elbow grease to do it.

20:48Some people swear by baking soda. I find for me that Barkeeper's Friend or Bon Ami works a little bit better. If something is like really caked on and I can't get it off, I let it soak for 30 minutes or overnight because I have to go to sleep and I don't care. Yeah. So for me, that's the way to clean it. But I do that for things that are like caked on and I don't want like remnants of ingredients. But I'm not bothered by the brown spots. I think they're beautiful. Wow. Okay. Now I feel like I've been shaming my sheet pans and I should look at them with a little more.

21:30No Botox for sheet pans. No. Their laugh lines are beautiful. They've lived a long life. Okay. So I have clarity on this. I'm also wondering if we can talk about toasting nuts on sheet pans and why that is the preferred method. Sanaya, you're making a lot of eye contact with me about this. Yeah, no, I mean, aside from pine nuts, but every other nut I essentially toast on usually a quarter sheet pan, unless I'm toasting a really big quantity of nuts. For me, it allows me to toast the nuts in the most even way. I usually end up toasting them as I'm preheating the oven to do something else. So it's like so simple.

22:10It's something that I just throw in as I'm already cooking. My one thought is that when you're toasting nuts in the oven, it's really important to use your nose and your eyes. Set a timer always. But in addition to the timer, like you'll smell the nuts. I mean, they'll smell so fragrant. And usually at that point, that's when you should check, even if the timer hasn't rung yet. But it's absolutely my favorite way to toast nuts. Yeah, same. And like you said, with the exception of pine nuts and the reason, in case anyone's wondering why not pine nuts, I find that they have a lot more oils and fattiness to them.

22:44I don't know if that's factually true, but it feels true. And I find that they burn so, so fast. Like, you know, they do within seconds. Like if you don't time it right and they're so expensive that to me burning them, it feels really painful because I've just spent so much money on these beautiful, lovely, delicious pine nuts. Yeah. Those I usually toast just in a small skillet, you know, over low heat. Keep an eye on them more. And also they're smaller than other nuts. I would imagine that would impact like why they would burn a little bit faster, too. So is there a preferred sheet pan brand out there that you came to during all of the sheet pan cooking?

23:20You know, I have only really owned Nordic Wear sheet pans. I've tried others, but they are no longer in my household. I don't have a lot of space. Like right now I'm storing my sheet pans above my fridge. I just have a little sliver of space and I stack them. But I love the Nordic Wear sheet pans. They're just so durable. They're light, but really sturdy. I've never had a Nordic Wear sheet pan warp, even at super high heat. They're just incredible. They're my favorite. Yeah, I love Nordicware as well. Costco sells them in a bundle of two for like under$20. Hot tip. It's a hot tip. It's a hot tip from Hot Cheat.

24:02Sorry. No, I love it. We need like a little sound effect. Or like, you know, any restaurant grade. Yeah. The other brand that I really love is Chicago Metallic. And it's actually the first sheet pan brand I owned. They're a little thicker. They feel a little more industrial than Chicago Metallic. I don't notice the difference in quality over one or the other. They're both excellent. I have six half sheet pans and two quarter sheet pans right now, and I really would like more. Those are our favorites because you won't have any issue in terms of warping. And also we prefer the uncoated sheet pans.

24:41Yes. As opposed to ones that are coated with a nonstick surface. Oh, so something that I learned within the last like 36 hours is that they are coated. They're aluminum pans that are coated with a thin stainless steel layer in some cases and not coated in others. But I think when we say uncoated, what we mean is like the dark, the nonstick ones, you know, the ones that have that like almost like a Teflon-y seal to them. Those are the ones that we don't recommend because they can scratch a lot easier and they're a little more persnickety. I would rather, you know, scrub my sheet pan a little more, but not worry about the coating.

25:20Because also they're a little bit more expensive at times. And I think like if you're spending$30,$40 on a sheet pan and then it scratches within the first month of use, does not feel good. Yeah, it's not worthwhile. I have to admit something that I think maybe I told Sinai involving my Nordic wear pans, which is that they've never warped in the oven, but I have used them to go sledding in the park before. And that did warp them. So that is what I will tell people is that if you really need a sled, it will work, but it will probably not be the best for your cooking long term. I never thought of them as sledding vessels, but I love that they can do that as well.