468: New York Pastrami, Romanian Pastramă with Carolina Gelen

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0:31like a regular person that doesn't film videos for a living they don't know to look for a kitchen that's not facing north so when i moved into that apartment i realized you want a southern facing kitchen because that's when you'll get the most amount of life

0:51This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbarg.

0:59Cookbook author and online personality Carolina Gellin is on a mission to share her love of food, which comes into focus in a great new cookbook, Past the Plate, 100 Delicious, Highly Shareable Everyday Recipes. Carolina's journey began in Transylvania, Romania, where she was born and raised. In 2021, she immigrated to the United States to pursue her passion for food full-time. She's a recipe developer and food content creator with work featured in the New York Times and on the Food Network and in Food 52. In this episode, we hear about Carolina's journey to her debut cookbook and what makes her recipes unique and cookable.

1:38I really hope you enjoy our conversation.

1:50Carolina Gellin, welcome to This is Taste. It's great to meet you. How are you? It's so nice meeting you, Matt. I'm so excited to be here. I've been a fan of your work online and now your cookbook, Past the Plate, which is out this fall. You came in on a red eye from Utah. I did. I did. I'm a sleeper. When it comes to planes, the minute they turn on those blue lights, I'm falling asleep. You're a pro. Yes. To be fair, this time I did have a lot of work to do, so I did pull an all-nighter. You went all-nighter mode. Yes, yes. But I do that a lot. I'm very much a one-woman show, so I do find myself pulling a lot of all-nighters.

2:28So let me ask you, when you come to New York, you shot your cookbook here, so you're familiar with the city. What are some of your go-tos, places that you like to visit? Oh, great question. I always have to get a bagel. I've been really gravitating towards Apolo's bagels. They have been really amazing. If I have, I only pack a backpack when I come here because I'm usually here for like two or three days. And I hate carrying like a big luggage with me. But if I have this space, I will get some bagels from here, bring them to Utah, freeze them and just have them in my freezer at all times. I'm going to Frankl's and getting their pastrami, just good old classic pastrami.

3:09And what else? Dude, Frankl's is like super underrated. It is. I love that call. I feel like no one really makes it there. And also their bagels are good too. Yeah, bagels are good there. Yeah, we're like Katz's town. Katz's is great. It is great. But shouts to Frankl's. Yeah, shout out to Frankl's. As I was shooting my cookbook, I found myself eating there quite a bit. That's awesome. So let's, growing up in Romania, I want to get a sense to start, you know, what's food like in your household? and like how did you pick up these these cooking skills that are so innate and inherent it's obvious you've been doing this for a while so growing up we didn't have a lot growing up so we cooked our own food at all times we never went out to eat maybe we went out to eat once a year for some special occasion like an anniversary or birthday but we we are very much a meat and potatoes family.

4:05So very hearty food. We have polenta, which in Romanian we call mamaliga, potatoes, meat, freshly slaughtered chickens. I always say this how we lived in an apartment complex and you happen to know people that know people that live in a village and like they're just going to show up to your door and give you like a freshly slaughtered chicken. So lots of meat and potatoes for sure. And my mother always let me be around her. I was always a creative child. Like I went through a phase of painting and then I designed like clay earrings and things like that. And food was like my third phase. And that's what really stuck with me.

4:52So I grew up watching the Food Network and Jamie Oliver and Yotama Tolengi and all these people on TV. and I would always try to replicate what they were doing because I couldn't try their foods at a restaurant or anything, so I'd have to make it myself. And also, I also want to give credit to, like, the Food Network and all these shows for teaching me English. Wow. I think that is—English for me is a self-taught language, and I think that's where I picked most of it by watching food shows growing up. So it's Jamie, it's Alton Brown. Yes. What else do you watch? That's amazing that you learned English from Jamie and from, I mean, Guy Fieri.

5:32Yes. That's a special kind of English. Yeah, Gordon Ramsay, like MasterChef. It's funny. Sometimes I catch myself saying certain words in English in certain accents based on whoever taught me that word. Like I'll say something. I found myself saying knackered. Like I'm in the U.S. and I'm like, oh, man, I'm knackered today. That's a Jamieism. Yes. Americans are like, what is she saying? But yes, definitely. Chopped also was a huge show. So cool. Yeah. I love this journey. I mean, were you watching it like after school? Yes, yes. And I was very young. I was probably four or five years old. And I think that's where I was able to learn English and sort of absorb and mimic their accents because I was very young.

6:19And I was still learning how to speak and how to talk. So I think it was easy for me to just capture. I love that story. Now, have you, like, met some of these folks? Have you, like, interacted with, like, the Food Network? I love – I feel like you've got to have a show now. I know. I – you know what? I have been – I developed some recipes for the Food Network. But I haven't met any – let me think. Have I met any of them? I haven't met Jamie Oliver. I haven't met Yutama Tolengi. But I might. I might. Let's just say I've been emailing with a couple of them. So maybe there's going to be a collaboration popping on Instagram at any point.

7:01I love this. We'll watch for that. Yeah, we'll put it out in the universe. We'll manifest that. Exactly. We're manifesting on the show. Yes. Yeah, we'll give Jamie. When it's going to be out, I'm going to credit this moment. Oh, okay. It's great. So when we went on This Is Taste, we talked about doing a collab with Jamie. And next thing you know, you're in London in a studio. Exactly. Exactly. It's happening. Now, let me ask you about Romania. Is there a national dish? Oh, so I would say the first thing that comes to mind would be sarmale, which is cabbage rolls. I think, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a national dish.

7:40I think we have a lot of dishes that we make as Romanians, like mamaliga, which is the polenta casserole, or sarmale, which is cabbage rolls. A lot of recipes like that. But placinta is also another one, which is this stuffed pastry with like cheese. And it's just like a simple. It looks like a pita. If I were to compare it with something, it would look like a pita. What else? Chicken noodle soup. Yeah. It's huge. Like we always had it growing up. We would have it at least like three times a week. Well, you had those fresh chickens arriving. Yes, exactly. From your nice neighbors. Plus, I don't know if people know this.

8:21when you slaughter an old rooster, for example, the meat is really tough. But in Romania, we always say how an old rooster makes the best soup. Nice. And sometimes it's funny people say that as a saying too. You're like, it literally works. It's funny. I catch myself doing that, me being in the US right now, I will translate certain Romanian sayings, like word by word in English expecting people to know what they mean so I'll catch myself at a coffee shop being like you know what you can't make peace between a cabbage and a goat that's so funny people stop and they're like what is this woman talking about but still like it's charming and it's it's why Carolina we we love your your your content I hate using the term but Everyone knows what I mean, so apologies.

9:14Take us back to when you went online. And I'm saying you went online official. Was this a slow growth? Was it a slow burn? Or did it just blow up? Because you're one of the most watched online cooking personalities today. What's the trajectory to get there? It started slow. It started just by me posting whatever I made for lunch. And then people slowly started asking for recipes. And because I grew up making everything from scratch, like it's very natural for you to just go to the stove and start cooking something without a recipe. My mother, for example, she never in her life followed a recipe, even desserts.

9:56She's just going to eyeball a dessert and it just comes out amazingly. But it started like that and people requesting the recipes and I learned how to write recipes and what people were interested in and what readers wanted. And I think this process helped me in writing the cookbook because I have such an amazing direct feedback from readers at home and home cooks at home who ask amazing questions. I always encourage them to ask me questions like, no question is a dumb question. Ask it because I'm here to clarify it and help you find your way in the kitchen and really enjoy cooking. And I think that helped me with writing my cookbook because I always had those questions in mind.

10:41And I know that I was telling you earlier how if, let's say, you're making a dough and the dough looks a little bit crumbly, I know that if you're a first-timer, you're going to be like, oh, I did something wrong. Like, I need to add more water. But you don't. So I always made sure in my instructions to reassure people like, hey. It might not look perfect now. This doesn't look perfect, but keep going. and after I started writing recipes, Instagram introduced videos and TikTok came about and all that stuff and when I started creating videos, I think that's when I saw the blow up. Was there like an overnight viral recipe?

11:21You set it like at 9 p.m. and you go to bed and then you wake up and there's like a million something something. Yes, it was such a foreign territory for me and they just introduced them so you don't know what to expect and you suddenly, because you wouldn't get 2 million views on a picture post or 2 million likes or anything like that. And then you post a video and you suddenly have 5 million views in the first five hours. You're like, whoa, this is very, it's very exciting, but it's also like, whoa, this is just, I remember the first time someone made my recipe and I was like, it was so shocking that someone followed it to the T and it worked, but it also puts so much pressure on you Because it's your responsibility to make sure that people are using those ingredients and that the recipe works out.

12:07Carolina, that's like a new reality for you. Yes. Like I've never done that before. I never wrote a recipe for someone to follow. And especially with English not being my first language, I'm like I'm extra careful with everything I was putting into these recipes. But, yes, I start blowing up. And then the first person who actually reached out to me was someone from the New York Times who saw my video and was interested in me producing some videos for the New York Times, which I remember getting that email. And I thought to myself, that's a scam. I'm in Romania. Like, get a life. Whoever's trying to prank me, have a good one.

12:45Like, I'm not interested in this stuff. But then I went back a week later and I'm like, what if it's real? because it does say at New York Times. And that's how I signed a freelance contract with them. And that was my first job in the food media industry, which I'm so grateful for to this day. Give credit to the person at the New York Times. Yes, it's Becky. Becky. Becky from the, yes, she is their. Becky Hughes? Yes. Yeah, Becky Hughes. She is their social media manager. And I made sure to mention her in my cookbook as well in the credits. Yeah, she helped me a lot with videos as well because she's the one giving me feedback, her and Natasha.

13:25They're giving me feedback on my videos, and I feel like they've been really helping me to refine my style and my eye with that. And then six months later, after taking that first freelance job, Food52 reached out to me, and they offered me a recipe resident position at Food52 back in 2019, 2020. Pre-pandemic we're talking about. Yes, yes. Yes, it was pre-pandemic and then the pandemic hit. So I was like in that awkward period of time where it's like pre-pandemic. You're just starting your career. Yes. And pandemic hits. And like you probably saw your audience grow tremendously during the pandemic.

14:05Definitely, definitely. Because everyone's at home. We're all cooking. So I feel like that kept a lot of us from going insane. For sure. having that community and just sharing the love of food with each other helped so many of us i know it helped me a lot just being at home cooking something just for the sake of cooking it how did you come up with your aesthetic because you have you've made choices with your videos and and i like you use a lot of natural light you use a framing that it's like tight on the uh like you don't give a lot of space in your kitchen and it's a really cool choice because there's an intimacy there.

14:46You see the food is obviously presented in a cool, quick way. How did you develop the style? Do you edit all your videos yourself? Yes. I'm doing everything by myself, which is why I pull so many all-nighters. I think it might be time to hire a few people to help me out because I'm slowly, I see the gray hairs starting to pop and I'm like, maybe this is my time to hire a team. But I think it's funny that you're mentioning that because you're giving me so much more credit. I started filming these recipes in a maybe like a two meter balcony in Romania. It was really, really small. And I had this small marble slab that I used to film on.

15:33So I couldn't show all the stuff around the balcony because that's I remember that's where we kept, I don't know, seltzer and other. We kept like a huge, huge barrel of sauerkraut. So it was your sauerkraut patio. It was my sauerkraut patio in Romania. And that barrel was so huge, it would take up so much space. I'm like, I can't show that bright red lid in my videos. So I had to get really close to the food so I don't show all the funny stuff. Let me see if I can find a picture because my mother, she texted me. I love to see it. I love to see the full frame. But I think it's like clearly you've made this choice out of necessity, but it created an aesthetic that I think everyone was really drawn to.

16:21A hundred percent. And I think I think we all eat with our eyes. And I think being able to visualize the food and visualize the steps helps the reader so much. So I do focus on showing all the steps and really making the food exciting, but also approachable for people. Because I feel like when you read a recipe, you understand it to a certain capacity, but then you see the video and you're like, oh, I can make this. Especially when it comes to cutting instructions, I feel like those are a whole other thing. Maybe it's because English is not my first language, but when it's like crosswise, widthwise, lengthwise, twist this to the left, turn it, it's like a whole thing.

17:05But when you see it in a video, it's so much easier. It's funny, no matter where you live, the last place I rented, the kitchen was facing north. And you don't know this before you move to a place or before, or at least someone like a regular person that doesn't film videos for a living. they don't know to look for a kitchen that's not facing north. So when I moved into that apartment, I realized I had to learn it on. Southern exposure. Yeah, you want a southern facing kitchen because that's when you'll get the most amount of light. Most light. Let's talk a little bit about some of the specifics in your book.

17:43And I feel like I need to start and say you are the crinkle cake queen, which I love that technique. How did you land on the crinkle cake as kind of a way of doing many different styles, savory, sweet, etc.? So the crinkle cake trend actually started on TikTok and it was popularized by this account at Romina said wow. Oh, yeah. And I believe she has a whole business selling this cake. and it started a few years ago, but I recently revisited that and I wanted to sort of give it a savory take because I've only seen sweet ones. And that's how it started. I have another one that I want to make, which is a crinkle cake caprese, like a caprese crinkle cake with like mozzarella and basil and tomatoes.

18:33Describe this a little bit, what a crinkle cake is exactly. So a crinkle cake, you basically take filo pastry and you crinkle it, hence the name and then you bake it until it's nice and golden and crispy and once it gets to that texture you pour some sort of custardy liquid to it so to my savory one i do a yolk base so it's like yolk and maybe some heavy cream or milk and spices if you're going to do the sweet one similar thing but add sugar to it so it's reminiscent of bread pudding if you will um or the greek and Turkish and I had it in Greece. Yeah. And Mediterranean pastries and Middle Eastern pastries.

19:14It's there. It's in that genre of of dishes. I love it. OK, so let me ask you, you dedicate a whole chapter to eggs. Yes. Which is a choice, which is a choice I support. Not every listener loves eggs. Some some folks are egg free. Bless you if that's your your zone or your path, but I love an egg. Why decide to go this route? I really, so I grew up eating eggs for breakfast. That was like a huge thing. Again, the same way someone would show up with chicken at our apartment, we would have this one neighbor, even now whenever, I haven't been home in three years, but I know if I went to go home, he would show up with two dozen eggs almost every other day.

20:01Wow. So you get to a point where it's like, There's just so many eggs. You're starting to make pavlovas every day and ice creams and custards. So I grew up eating eggs. They're such an affordable protein that a lot of people have access to. And I always find myself eating eggs for breakfast. It's such an easy breakfast. So I wanted to give people that. What's your highlight from that chapter? Oh, you know which one I really love? I have a fennel potato cake. Oh, cool. So it's like this really thick hash brown with like fennel and it's fried. So I grate the potatoes and then I fry it on the stove and then I finish it in the oven so it's nice and tender on the inside.

20:49And I top it off with lox. It is like a giant thick latke, like a really thick crispy latke. Exactly. So I think that one's definitely up there for me. I love it. I love that idea of the fennel forward. Okay, you're really, you're quite canny, pun intended, with the butter beans. Because butter beans, I feel, are so, like the shape and the flavor work so well across many different recipes. But it's like they're less, the garbanzo is stolen to show. but you're more butter bean focused why center recipes are on this ingredient it's it's such a great bean with so much texture i feel like if you try different kinds of beans the texture of butter beans i will say it's similar to a garbanzo bean so it has that bite to it compared to a cannellini bean that you open from a can and it's like just pure mush which totally fine it has its place but i prefer that texture and i find myself cooking it a lot from dry and freezing it so you really get to capture that texture and i think the size it's this gnocchi sized bean and it just holds a sauce so well and i grew up with a version of it in romania that kind of size we would always make stews from it.

22:16So some sort of stew. Does pan work in your recipes? 100%. Yeah. 100%. You don't have to make them from scratch. I don't even think I suggest making any of those from scratch. But if you do, that's a plus. If you don't, just use the canned stuff. And you can freeze them too. It's faster. Yes, they freeze really well. I love the... Yeah, I use those super cubes. They are so handy. It's like these silicone trays that are measured in like one cup or half a cup or two cups. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I freeze them in there so they're all portioned out. And whenever I need a can, I sort of know which one's going to yield me that.

22:56You just blow it like a cup cube. Mm-hmm. Carolina, we often forget about the last recipe in a book, but no more. On page 261, you have a stunning upside down orange olive oil cake that I think needs some credit. Yes. Let's talk about it. I really needed that recipe in there because it's one of my most loved and most popular recipes I've ever shared online. It's an upgraded version of the one I made for Food 52. It was a recipe I made, I believe it was during wintertime, and it was never meant to have oranges on it. So it was just an orange olive oil cake with cardamom. And I remember this one time we had so many oranges at home in Romania that I just felt like they belonged there.

23:51And I always like to share this story. growing up during a dictatorship, everything's rationed out. So my family would get citrus during wintertime. And whenever I eat any kind of citrus, mandarin, clementine, oranges, it doesn't matter what it is, whenever you open the fruit and it hits you with that scent and smell like those oils just disperse in the air, my parents are going to tell you the story about how they would only get like one orange during that winter time or like two or three, like very, very small amount. And it would be such a special thing that they would eat the whole fruit. Like they wouldn't even know that you're supposed to peel it or anything.

24:39You would just eat the whole fruit. So I sort of wanted to honor that in this cake and use the whole fruit and make a beautiful pattern around the cake for like this upside down olive oil cake. And it's tender and it's moist. And I remember doing Zoom classes with my community and it was always such a hit. And it's one of those approachable recipes that really sticks with you. Thanks for sharing that story. Yeah, of course. It's a great story. When you talk about the whole fruit, you're using the peel as well? Yes, yes. So I candy, I slice the oranges and then I candy them in this cardamom syrup.

25:16Yes, yes. And then I arrange them in a beautiful pattern at the bottom of the cake, pour the batter on top, and it bakes so, so well. And I really like it because what I like to do, I like to add a little bit of olive oil and syrup at the bottom of the cake. So everything stays nice and moist. And then when I flip the cake upside down, I like to brush it with a little bit more oil and with a little bit more syrup. And that leftover syrup is really good for drinks, for cocktails, for things like that. You have like really nice knife skills and like you're really like fluid. Like talk about your professional career.

25:55So I know you worked in Utah at a pretty badass restaurant. Yes. So that's actually what brought me to the U.S. I was able I had a job opportunity in Utah before I knew anything about Utah. I was just like, sure, I'll take a restaurant. You're like, sure. Yes. It's funny. When you don't live in the U.S., you don't realize that the states are all so different. You grow up seeing New York on TV or Hollywood and L.A. And you're like, oh, everything's like that. And then you get to Utah and you're like, wait a minute. Where are the skyscrapers that everyone has been raving about? So that's how I ended up in Utah.

26:35And I got to work a few jobs in the Park City resorts. I got to work at an auberge resort and then a few other bakeries and other shops throughout town. I used to work two full-time jobs for that whole time. And I used to live with six girls in an apartment. And it would be very much like we're going to hustle while we're here. And we're going to make a lot of money that we can bring home and support ourselves because the dollar goes a lot further in Romania than it does. So you're sending money back? Yes. Yes. You're sending money back. You're saving money for rent or for whatever you need. And you're just hustling and sleeping three hours a night.

27:23Yeah. What's life like? Are you happy? Because it sounds like you're happy because you're learning about food, but you're obviously working so hard. You know what? I think that's what made it feasible is enjoying being there and baking bagels and baking pastries and learning more about the industry. What's Sundance like working in Park City? Is that a crazy couple of weeks? Yes. Sundance, it's just I know a lot of people that leave Park City while Sundance is happening because they don't want to deal with all that stuff. I don't live in Park City, but I live near it. And I still feel all that, just everything just bubbling and bursting in Park City.