469: Bodega Bakes with Paola Velez

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I'll make you a sandwich. You want a chopped cheese? You want this? You want that? Like, no problem. You come to us every day. I got you. I don't know. Maybe that's like a New Yorker spirit. You know, everybody thinks like New York is like this hustle and bustle and like people are mean or rude. Far from it. It's so loving and so kind. And I want to embody that in this book. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59Paola Velez is an award-winning chef, activist, and author based in Washington, D.C. She's the co-founder of the viral grassroots bake sale, Bakers Against Racism, and the author of a great debut cookbook, Bodega Bakes. We brought Paola into the studio to talk about her impressive career, including acting as a culinary diplomat for the State Department and the unforgettable recipes in her book, like pecan plantain sticky buns.

1:32Paola Velez, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It's so fun to have you here in New York. How has your trip been so far? Have you eaten anything good? So, so far I've baked two cakes, a bunch of cupcakes, and I hope that my jello molds set. but I actually fell asleep I woke up at four yesterday in DC and then I fell asleep in New York yesterday so that's all I've done all you've done is baked things and you haven't had the chance to eat them when you make something like for a photo shoot like this do you stick around to try to eat it at the end of the day or are you kind of over it at that point it's I'm not over it I just feel like I can eat my stuff anytime I want, right?

2:16So I let other folks enjoy. And I tell people to bring like Tupperware and stuff so that they can take it to their friends, you know. I don't believe in wasting, so I hope that everyone like eats and partakes of it. And if I do start to notice, I will stick around sometimes if I start to notice that it's not moving a lot and I'll try to donate it to like a community fridge or something. Yeah, that's a nice thing to do. I I cannot but suspect that on this shoot, people will take the cake home or bring it to a friend or something like that. And you're from New York originally. So when you come back home, is there anywhere that you try to eat just to get a taste of childhood or anything?

2:53So I would say that I try to keep up to date with what's happening in the dining scene here. It's so much more unique than D.C. And that's not to say that D.C.'s dining scene isn't so unique, right? Because it is like a place to be seen now when you think of food, you know. But I feel like I just want to try new things, you know, like maybe I want Burmese food, you know what I mean? Or maybe I want to go to like, is it called like Double Chicken, Please? Double Chicken, Please. I love their key lime like mixture, like the drink. I'm pretty sure they're going to be like, she's never allowed in here again because she botched the name.

3:37But there's this drink that tastes like key lime pie. Whoa. And it's like really awesome. Like you should eat before you go because then you're going to keep drinking. And it's like they have one that's like soba noodles and like it's just really fantastic stuff, you know. So stuff like that, while we get some of it in D.C., we don't get that far into like creative spaces because it's a political space, you know. It's a place that you go and you voice your rights, you know. But sometimes that limits, you know, who can rent a small business. And in New York, it's a lot more accessible to rent, you know.

4:15Yeah. I would imagine that if you live outside of New York, but you follow a lot of the food media that's based here in New York, you probably see a lot of things on Instagram. And when you're here, you've got to figure it out for yourself and see if it's like actually good or fun. Yeah. What are you saying is back on the menu in D.C. right now that you made? Oh, OK. So there's a small bar, like a 20-seat bar called Providencia just off of H Street behind Maketo, owned by my friend Eric Brenner-Yang. And we just kind of like collaborated. And I was like, can I put something on your menu? So I made a baked Alaska kakegori.

4:54Whoa. which is kind of going like um i guess it's like cult viral you're like i guess it's viral almost it's not there yet it's not there yet but i think it's to the point where like we're trying to keep up you know but it's really exciting like this is the first time in a long time that i've had a dessert on a menu where i can like sneakily watch people from like this over it like there's this little lounge upstairs that has like a cutout window and I can see right down into the bar and I could watch people eat it's so cute and people are like I've never had ice and meringue together and I'm like welcome to my world you know so it's really fun it's but that's why I'm like while I want to gatekeep a lot of things for myself if I gatekept that and like somebody else that talks about it, let's say like Feed the Malik.

5:54She's an influencer in DC. If she kept that, you know, kakigori, if she goes and tries it, then there's a whole audience of hers that won't be able to understand or know it, right? So maybe I'll share later a few of my New York gems. Maybe. We'll come back to it, but I want to break down baked Alaska kakigori for a second so what does that look like when it comes to the table how are you making this pastry magic happen okay so um we fly the ice from japan whoa casual start okay you know and we have like one of the best uh shaved ice machines on the market right now um which is like you don't need that because i grew up eating like frio frio which is shaved ice in washington heights or anywhere where you have like a Latin community and you can do the same really close to the same effect with like this metal tool you just you're going to be like super buff afterwards but I think really it boils down to having like like a quality structure right so like my portion is only like six ounces and then I layer you know if I want to do some ice I'll do some syrup so I have like this really fun, what I call dulce milk, which is like a little bit of condensed milk with some half and half, right?

7:20I shouldn't probably be like sharing the whole secret. Someone's writing this down right now. Yeah, somebody's like, oh my God, you know, but maybe I could, maybe I should. I don't know. Why gatekeep? Maybe this will inspire me to make something else, right? But then you pour some of that milk and then starting off, I love going to the farmer's market. I have this club called Antisocial Farmer's Market Club and we kind of meet and like if we want to talk to each other, we do, but sometimes we don't and that's fun too. So I go like to the farmer's market every weekend if I can, if I'm in town. And I found some like Virginia plums right when they were coming into season.

8:00And I made that into a syrup with some guava paste. and I made sure that it was like sweet and sour and just like really fun because guava paste can be very heavy if you're not careful you know and I layer those like two syrups together in between layers of shaved ice and then actually the meringue from my Dominican cake recipe in bodega bakes is the meringue that I use in the kitchen right now right which is like Like half of what I wanted to do with the book was like to do it for home cooks. But also there's a lot of chefs that don't feel comfortable with pastry. And I wanted to break it down the same way that I feel I think about pastry.

8:45I want people to think about that too. So this is like a hybrid meringue. Most of the time when you think of like meringue, you think of like light and airy. But utilizing the same proteins in the egg and sugar boiled to a certain point, You can stabilize your meringue to the point that it gets even more fortified with cold elements like ice. So it is a very strong, stable meringue that is humidity proof because I'm in Washington, D.C. And I use this like icing piper tip or something it's called. Wilton, if you hear this, I'm sorry, I messed up the name. But, you know, and I like I just squiggle these designs on the kakigori and then I brulee it to make it a baked Alaska.

9:35And it's in its essence, it's very simple. But if you weren't able to stabilize the meringue the way that I did, the protein in the egg would break down once it comes in contact with moisture. But in this case, it does the opposite. It becomes even stronger. And we tested it and it stayed like frozen and upright for almost 20 minutes. Isn't that crazy? Science! Chemistry! Maybe physics also? I don't know. That's so incredible to hear about all of the components. I feel like as a diner, I love going to a restaurant or a bakery and I see something on the menu and just the name alone sells me on it.

10:19And I feel like Baked Alaska Kakigori is successful because it's two separate things that people might know and love, but you're putting them together. Yeah. Do you feel like that's something that you come back to when you're developing recipes or what kind of makes something a Paola like signature dessert? So I will say that I try to push the boundaries of my own limits. Right. So like I might have made this dessert now and eventually there is going to be a lot of copycats. Right. People are going to figure it out or they're going to buy the book and they're really like, thank God she put this meringue recipe in there.

10:50They're going to listen to the podcast and figure it out. Right. Which is fine. Right. Half of baking is not like if we imagine if like, you know, French patisseries were gatekeeping, like the way that society is kind of now. We wouldn't have any baking techniques to kind of glean off of and learn from. So I make something. I enjoy it. Maybe it's my dessert of the year or something for me personally. Right. And then I figure out how to like top that, you know, and I kind of compete with myself. Like I'm too busy focusing on, you know, how can I change, you know, the the structure of a plantain, a sweet plantain?

11:35How can I swap out even just a sweet plantain like in the plantain sticky buns? How can I swap out corn syrup for sweet plantains and utilize the starch in the plantain to kind of emulate the starches and corn syrup? You know, little things like that, that kind of like make me really excited to be in the kitchen. Not everything works for a home kitchen, but this book, you know, I tried really hard to make sure that everything worked. Like I tested it like a billion times, you know, and then I, you know, got Mary Dodd, my recipe tester. She's also the recipe tester for Dory Greenspan. And, you know, it was really special because I want I made a friend, you know, in Mary.

12:22And she kind of like held my hand through this book process because it's very daunting and scary to like compile more than 100 ideas. and hope, pray that people like it, you know. But it was something that she said that kind of like blew me away. She's like, this is the first time in a very long time that I felt like I was learning stuff, you know. And I was like, Mary, why would you say this? Now I'm emotional. I love that. That's such a huge compliment. And I do think it gets to the core of what cookbooks are, which is really good advice and technique. And the goal is to really empower people to make kinds of things.

13:04I'm interested in how you landed on the recipes in this book because you have such a broad spanning baking career. You got your start working in restaurants like Jacques Torres and Christina Tosi. You have done pop-ups. How much of the book are recipes that you've maybe used in some context versus things that you developed from scratch? So a lot of the recipes, I will say, come from these things that I call mother recipes. They're recipes that I have figured out how to work it in a home oven and an industrial kitchen and altitude baking, right? Plus or minus a few things at sea level, below sea level, right?

13:47Right. Little things like that. Right. Where I know that these are like the foundation of who I am, my essence, what I want in a dessert. And then, you know, once you learn how to understand the ratios of those mother recipes. Oh, my God. The world is your oyster. Oh, that was very New York of me. I'm sorry. Oyster. But it's one of those things where a lot of it, I mean, you know, my job now is social media and marketing, right? So brands come to me to make sure that I can talk to a different audience than the audience that they normally reach, right? Particularly my audience, right? Right. And I was sitting down and as I read through all the cookbooks that I have, cookbooks that were coming to me in the spring and last year, fall, before that.

14:40Right. Like I read and I was like, what can I give people? You know what I mean? Because like if I'm being honest, even before I submitted the proposal, I had all these recipes done, you know. So like it wasn't like we shopped the proposal and then all of a sudden I was like, what's that mean? That's like, right? Like I wasn't trying to scramble to make these recipes. Like there were already things that I was like, here's 150 things that I can make confidently that I can teach other people to make. Right. And then thank God they cut it down from 150 recipes. um you know one of those things that i i kind of like sat with myself one um it took me two years to even get to like the proposal to like figure out what i wanted to say because i was like deathly afraid of creating a book that would go on clearance you know what i mean like yeah it would just be like you make a cookbook and then all of a sudden it's like in the clearance okay you know and i'm like the whole podcast is just like tiktok audio chronically online check mark you know little ding um but it was one of those things where i was like what can i give to folks that might um view this as their own personal like baking bible right like maybe they don't have like the flavor bible right maybe they don't even understand like or geek out with pastries, right?

16:13Or food in general, right? Maybe they're a consumer of foods, right? And they trust folks like myself to just make stuff for them because they're like an oven, ew, right? And then I kind of was like, all right, this is not a book to prove something to people. Like I've won a lot of rewards already, right? And I'm very grateful for everything that I've gotten. And this isn't a book to prove to people that I can bake, right? Like, I think we've established that. Yeah, a little bit, right? So now I can prove to myself that I can step aside from the big picture, from the limelight, and let a new generation of bakers rise up.

16:57A new generation of people that want to, you know, maybe they want to own a little cafe bakery and they just don't know how to start. And they'll pick up this book and they can use these as their mother recipes, understanding how to maneuver techniques, how to look at ratios, how to even just swap out ingredients, you know. And then maybe, just maybe, I won't be the only Dominican chef when you Google Dominican pastry chef on le Google right now, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it comes across in the book that you've created, like even in the title Bodega Bakes Recipes and Recipes for Sweets and Treats Inspired by My Corner Store.

17:37How does that ethos come across in the book and the recipes? So a big portion of the book for me is like giving this homage to bodegas. A lot of people maybe don't even like New Yorkers maybe don't even think about bodegas in this way. But once I moved away, I realized how much of a third space a bodega is. It is literally the connecting point between a neighborhood, between communities. You know, it doesn't matter your sex, your age, whatever, you know, like you can go into a bodega and buy a chopped cheese or order, you know, a black coffee and go about your day, you know, and everybody respects each other.

18:21Everybody respects the bodega owner. Everybody knows the bodega is, you know, our safe zone. Everybody loves the cat that lives at the bodega. Oh, yeah. That's the manager. Yeah. He's in charge. But it's like this is like a love letter to that because when I was in New York growing up, the bodega owners knew each and every one of the kids, especially the one right across from my middle school. they knew all of us you know we would all come in and we would buy I don't know bubble yum or I don't know you know sour straws and juice jugs and they knew exactly when our parents had plenty when they didn't have and you know the the amount of times where a bodega owner would be like oh you're not ordering your usual today why don't you go ahead and grab it and then give me what you do have you And they would take this L for the ultimate greater good to make sure that we were okay and our childhood was protected.

19:24And that doesn't come from just a regular corporate supermarket. Foodtown. Yeah. I mean, Foodtown themselves, they even are a little bit more aware of what's going on. Yeah, I shouldn't be disparaging Foodtown because that's my local grocery store also, and I love it. the sales I mean I love it too but you know and I kind of like found that this they gave so generously so I had to put myself and realize that I need to give equally as generously as they have given me things um even as like a line cook when I came back to New York after I moved away with my parents um you know for like a few years I moved away and I went to culinary school I came right back to New York and I made the unfortunate mistake of living on my own.

20:21New York is now for the faint of heart. And I remember my bodega odor was, you know, a roll toasted with monster cheese and a chocolate nutriment, you know, and sometimes that could be like$2.50. But as a line cook, barely making, you know, minimum wage at that time,$2.50 is a lot of money. and if, you know, maybe I needed to buy a fancy chef's knife because, you know, kitchen culture, you know. And back in 2009, it wasn't what it is now. Like, now somebody, like, I had an open-door policy. Like, people could come to me and go, Chef P, you've offended me. I want to talk to you in the office. And I'm like, well, what did I do now?

21:10You know? I gave the cooks this thing that I didn't have in the industry. And back then in 2009, you definitely didn't talk. You didn't look people in the eye. You're just like, yes, chef. And you keep moving. And if they wanted to bully you that day, you just let them. And sometimes they would be like, what is this piece of crap knife? Why do you have this apron? Blah, blah, blah. And you would have to spend money that you didn't have to fit in. you know, and being a girl and I look young, I sound young and I'm really goofy to my detriment. Like I never fit into kitchens, you know, and I had to do the most that I could to maintain just employment, like the minimum.

21:57And I sometimes I didn't have money. And like the bodega owners would notice. They're like, you didn't order your monster on a roll with your nutriment. Why? And I'm like, oh, no, I just want a butter roll today. You know, that's all I want. And like, they're like, so what do you eat throughout the day? And I'm like, oh, I'm going to like say eat half of this butter roll now. And then later I'll save the other half for like lunch dinner. And they're like, why don't you grab your nutriment and you like I'll make you a sandwich. You want a chopped cheese? You want this? You want that? Like, no problem.

22:32You come to us every day. I got you, you know. And I don't know. Maybe that's like a New Yorker spirit. You know, everybody thinks like New York is like this hustle and bustle and like people are mean or rude. Far from it. It's so loving and so kind. And I want to embody that in this book. This book goes out to all the bodega owners everywhere. Honestly, maybe it'll be sold in the bodega with everything else also. That would be the ultimate dream. Maybe the cat can promote for me. Yeah, the cat can paw mark every copy. Yeah. So I want to talk to you about Bakers Against Racism, which is a grassroots, like, global, I would say, bake sale that you co-founded in 2020.

23:12And today it's officially, unofficially, officially the world's largest bake sale, raising over$2.5 million for social justice causes. What does it feel like to see that growth? The world's largest bake sale is incredible. I think during that time, I didn't know if we were going to survive, you know. And it just felt like we were fighting one uphill battle to then have to like circle back to something that I thought we were moving on from. And that's not to say that after 2020, everything's been like rainbows and sunshine. It's not. It's a dumpster fire, you know. But it felt really great to be in community with folks that I would have never, ever like stepped into their space or their world.

24:00You know, I was in community with folks that had three Michelin stars, you know, like I was in community with moms who bake for fun, you know, and it empowered a lot of people not just to bake. Right. But to kind of like stand up for what they believe in in their own way through baked goods. You know, I always say like you can't argue back if your mouth is full of cookies. so like it's one of those like disarming tactics of displaying humanity um like yes everything is a fight right um to fight for my rights to to fight as a black woman as a caribbean woman um it's always a fight right but what if i'm tired of fighting you know and i just want to love and i want to just be treated like a human and that's what bakers against racism was like i just wanted people to understand why we were asking for our lives to matter, why we want to be not seen as equal, but just regarded as humans.

25:10And it was wildly beyond my dream, my comprehension. Like, I don't think I've ever seen those types of numbers before. Like, I really only wanted, I think it was like something like 80-something bakers, you know what I mean, to participate. Like I thought that was like a lofty goal. And like we go back to like this generosity. People want to be good. People want to give. People want to be kind. But society, capitalism, the world teaches us that if we're not hardcore, if we're not cutthroat, that we're not going to win in life and we're not going to have success in life. And there's so many people that just want to be nice, you know.

25:51And like not just nice to be like nicey nice or fake nice. Like genuinely, there's just good people that don't want anything in return. But yeah, it feels good. Great. Great. It feels good. I mean, I think it's so interesting to see how something can grow and evolve. And that was basically four years ago. And now what's happening with Bakers Against Racism today? Is it just grassroots that people can decide they want to do something underneath this umbrella and then they sign up through the website? So they don't even have to sign up, right? So everything is on the website for free 99. You can download all of the graphics.

26:25You can download the like talking points, any copy, even what we did for the first ever bake sale. I just give that freely for folks that want to emulate this. You know, we're a lighthouse organization, so we're not a nonprofit. We don't accept any money. I fully funded myself through my own working endeavors or, you know, this is like my contribution. If we have to have a tally at the end of our lives, this is my contribution to that. And I never accepted any money to run it. You know, people can do this. They can adopt this banner and bake for the causes that they believe in, as long as it's not in detriment of anybody or harming anyone.

27:12And it's uplifting. You know, some of the funnest ones that I've seen was like black surfers of Nova Scotia. You know what I mean? Like and like I always tell people, like, you don't have to just bake when we're in peril or in trouble. Right. Like bake for black joy, like for black love, you know, bake for causes that uplift the community, you know, that help others. And so much so it's Bakers Against Racism to this day. I've heard a lot of testimonials now that we're allowed to go back on the road. I'm able to meet people. You know, it's impacted a lot of people's lives and not just in the way of like, oh, I participated in a bake sale.

27:54You know, a lot of femme presenting, a lot of BIPOC folks have utilized these, you know, like this rubric of how to make a socially distant bake sale, pickup, charging, etc. And they've kind of adopted it as a business model. And in a way, inadvertently, I've showed people how to create a small business. And I've had mega influencers tell me that that taught them how to run their small cottage bakery to like moms that now can not just be stay-at-home moms. Now they're, you know, stay-at-home moms that bake for a living, you know. And that impact, I won't know. Maybe at the end of my life or once I've gone and passed, maybe somebody will take the time to figure out everything that BAR has done and how many lives it's impacted and courses of people's lives that it's changed.

28:56But for now, I just keep trucking forward, keep creating and try to be better than I was yesterday. you know? Yeah, I really appreciate what you're saying about how that format for running the business has been passed down to people because I do think I've run bake sales myself. The amount of work that goes into organizing is so dizzying. And it's also a lot of things that you kind of don't realize until you realize that you should have had it. Maybe it would have made your life easier. So for you to be providing that upfront, I think is really meaningful. And certainly the way that people have made it a cornerstone of their professional lives is really special.

29:31And I want to talk to you while we're talking about just kind of the impact of food and its many powers. When I was doing my research, I saw that you currently serve as a United States culinary diplomat with the State Department, which I didn't realize was a job that exists. But I love that it does and that you're the person that has it. So can you just tell me, like, what does that mean? What do you do with that? For sure. So I think there's like, don't quote me on this, but I think there's like 100 plus chefs that are part of this program. of diplomacy. And what we do is we represent all the best parts of the United States, you know, the United States is complex.

30:10And our history is trying, you know, and we're not perfect, you know, but what makes the United States, the United States is the people that reside within it, the cultures, the communities, cities, towns, states, you know, and all of us have like this unique perspective through food, the greatest connector, to showcase what it means to be American and how, you know, my mom, a woman who was a biochemist in her country, who then came to America in search of a better future, was able to then give her daughter everything that she could never dream of. For us as U.S. diplomats in the culinary space, it's a fun job.

31:02We get to meet amazing people. We meet a lot of politicians, a lot of politicals. I cooked for the Prime Minister of Australia. What did you make for the Prime Minister of Australia? Oh, yeah. I made this really fun take on funnel cake, like a state fair. So I wanted them to kind of like understand what my most cherished moment of going to like a New York City State Fair was. And like I took funnel cake that was lightly spiced. I took some pumpkin pastry cream and a little bit of cremeux and kind of like layered it in this like fun, whimsical way with pops of croquants so that there was like crunchy elements.