548: How to Quit Your Job to Write a Cookbook with Kristina Cho

25:07Or you can just toss it if you want it really saucy. I like options. I love options, too. And, listener, like, take a pause. Just, like, let's soak in what Christina just said. These books really work because the technique is so sound. And you've clearly done the work to make technique really the focus here because you're taking a few ingredients, which is what we all want. We seek that in our recipes. But if you just throw it in and make it a mush, that's not really technique. That's just like braising and mushing, which is fine. You know, I'm a regular guy. Sometimes, yeah. Fine. But, like, think about it as a cook.

25:41You want to know these hints. So, Christina, how did you, like, unlock these techniques, you know, without a culinary training? I'm just so impressed. That's a really good question. I don't know. I think it's like something pretty innate. Yeah. I think it stems a little bit from maybe my architecture and design background. Like I like to understand the why and then envision the result of something. Like when I was designing like a space, I would try to think of like a room, like what we're in. Like how many chairs do you want? What orientation? Like what do you want to feel like in there? And so when I think of a recipe, I want – I'm envisioning like how is someone going to feel as they make this?

26:18Is it going to be really frustrating? If it is, how can I make it more efficient, less stressful for them? You know, like how can I make the ingredient list as it should feel special but also shouldn't have things in there that you don't really need? You know? Again, like I mentioned I think mental barriers in recipes before and I think about that all the time, especially with the recipes I tend to write. Like I'm not making just like a normal chocolate chip cookie. People are like, yeah, I'll do that. No problem. You know, but peanut butter and chung fun, they're like, oh, what's chung fun? I don't want to get that.

26:50You know, or like, do I really need to buy hoisin? Like, I want there to be a really good reason for you to buy all those things. Yeah, I mean, you're using your architecture brain here, and it's a real skill set that's unique. And I just I love the work. You use your brain as well in bringing ranch dressing into your cookbook. Bless you. We're pro ranch on the show. Love it. Talk about it a lot. Ranch is getting good, by the way. There's like lots of bottle brands. That's a separate day. I'll go over the bottle brands I love. Full taste test. Full taste test. But smashed ranch cucumbers. Never seen this before.

27:25Brilliant. I think we all love smashed cucumbers. We recognize smashed cucumbers as being a really classic, you know, Cantonese, you know, technique. Throughout China, of course. Yeah. Cucumbers everywhere. You see it everywhere. You see it in Sichuan food all the time. But how did you figure this one out and tell us about this dish? Okay. So since you're from Michigan, when you go to the grocery store there, is there an aisle that's like full of like dried dip in like soup packets? Do you recognize that aisle or section? I head there early, early in my trip. I want to see some dehydrated ranch powders.

28:00So I feel like I grew up with that so much and they don't exist in the Bay Area where I live now. The only kind of like dry dip mix that I can get is Hidden Valley ranch seasoning in a bottle. I buy that all the time. Growing up, my mom would make ranch chicken wings. Like she would make like a dry chicken wing and like dust it in like the ranch powder, you know. So great. So in a way, it kind of feels like a pantry staple for me. I was like, I want to make like a really light and crispy cucumber salad, but maybe not use like the creamy ranch dressing to mix it. And that would be delicious too.

28:32I've done that all the time. And so I was like, why don't I just put like the dry mix in here, add some like rice vinegar, get like the juices out of the cucumber and like mix it all into like. And it looks like a classic smash cucumber salad, but it tastes like incredibly Midwestern at the same time. So that was kind of like my thought process for that salad. So brilliant. Yeah, you're getting that's like a steakhouse side. Yes. Yeah. I'm curious to see when that's going to show up somewhere. Yeah. Some restaurants is going to pinch that. I'm sure the chefs are grabbing the yearbooks because you're going to see these on menus.

29:05Another recipe I want to talk about is also an unlock. Purely original. Why has nobody thought about this before? Banh mi pasta salad. Wow. I'm really inspired to make this. Talk about your thought with bringing these classic Vietnamese flavors to the tubular pasta. Yes. And yeah, and people will be surprised to see it because it is like a Vietnamese inspired dish in a book that's called like Chinese enough. But there's a lot of like crossover there in the way that I grew up and like my friends and like the place I live now in the Bay Area. So that pasta salad lives in a chapter that's called Take It Outside.

29:43And I really wanted a chapter that was dedicated to like to backyard cookouts in the summertime. My family would always have like a big cookout in the summer. My birthday is in the summer. and my mom makes her own version of like pasta salad. But I didn't want every recipe in the book to be like my mom's recipe. I'm like, what is my pasta salad? And this recipe, I owe it to my husband for giving me this idea. Like we were eating my favorite banh mi. That's like, it's only like$4. Can you shout it out? What's the name? Banh mi ballet in El Cerrito, California. So good. El Cerrito's got such good food.

30:16Yeah. I love that. Amazing. Yeah. And we were eating it one day. And like, if you think about it, it's like you have like your crispy baguette as your carb, you know? And then you have like the Vietnamese mayo. You have like the pickles in there. You have cilantro, the pickles and jalapenos. And he just said, this would be really good in like a salad form. Like you don't even need meat in here. I guess you could add it. It's like, that's such a good idea. So I executed it. I kind of combined a technique of making Hawaiian mac salad with using the flavors of banh mi. And it completely works. And I really love the pickles.

30:51I call them party pickles in the book. And they're inspired by both Vietnamese pickles and then also Cantonese pickles. Like a lot of times you'll go to a restaurant in Hong Kong and there's like a communal jar of pickles on there that you can kind of add, like pickled daikon and stuff. And so that's a recipe that kind of, again, connects recipes together and is also just solid, like so good. What's the creamy factor? What's kind of, you know, serving as that iconic spread on a banh mi? I'm using Kewpie mayo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. For me personally, I'm using Kewpie mayo. That's what I have access to.

31:20That's what's in the pasta salad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last year I had like a really big, like I think it was like a 64 ounce tub of Kewpie mayo. Oh, you went food service size. Yeah, I got a food service size Kewpie mayo and I was really happy about it for a while. And I made the pasta salad with it because it's just so easy to scoop, you know? Fun fact, Kewpie is turning 100 years old this year. Wow. Yeah. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. 100 years of Kewpie. I love the iconic packaging too. What a cool dish. What's the pasta shape? I like to use like fusilli, like the spirals. I think it's really nice.

31:55I like the fusilli that is a little bit longer because it matches the size of the pickles. I don't know. I like the ratios of the ingredients going. I want everything to kind of go well together in terms of your bite size, you know. I mean, that's your brain. Yeah. I mean, it's all about, I would imagine. The details. Yeah. It's about proportion. Yeah. It's about white space when needed, white space when not needed. Totally. Totally. Like the little mince pieces of jalapeno can fit into the spirals of pasta. But when you use a fork to like get your pasta, you can also get your carrots because they're all like the same size.

32:30Like it all works really well together. I have to ask you, like as an interjection. Yeah. Top three architects in history. I mean, what's your what's your faces? I just did this on the spot. OK. Or two or one or. OK. This is probably so corny. I'd probably say my husband, Ruben Ault, is like one of the top three. Yeah. Ruben Ault. He's super talented. He designs really beautiful homes. I really enjoy probably Charles and Ray Eames. I was happy one of their, the case study house in LA did not burn down. It's one of my favorite projects. And one more, I guess. So when I, I used to live in New York City 12 years ago.

33:09I was an internship at Todd Williams, Billy Chen. And their duo, I remember I loved them in college and it was a good dream for me to work there. I still really love their work. How do you look at buildings in New York? I mean, as an architect, as a former architect, as a current architect, how do you look at, you know, we walk around the city, we see these construction sites, we see new things popping up all the time. I rarely get to speak with an architect, so I'm just taking advantage. How do you view a New York City cityscape? I would say, so like I think personally for me, because I live in the Bay Area and I've been there for like 11 years, when I come to New York City, I feel a little bit like a country pumpkin because of the scale difference.

33:46Like the city is just so big and it's like amazing. So it's a little overwhelming. We're turning over buildings a lot more too. There's like a lot of it. And I think like me personally, I've never really been into like the design of like skyscrapers or like big multifamily buildings, you know. And so that's kind of like a lot that I see in like New York City. but my mom and I were actually just like walking on the High Line last night. That was like one of my favorite places to walk on. Like when I lived here, I go there when I can, when I visit and stuff. And I love looking at the apartments that are like on the level of the High Line.

34:20I love studying like how their windows are designed and like some of them think about privacy and some don't. And the materials, like I think some of the buildings were thinking of how they reacted with like the nature aspect of the High Line and some really don't. I think I pick up more on things like that. Like how are things reacting to each other, whether or not instead of do I like what that looks like? No, it's really. It's a little arbitrary. Like I just like to know, like, what were they thinking? What was the concept behind it? And I love the Highline plug because you can see so many various styles of buildings and you're up close to the materials.

34:53You can almost touch them. You can almost touch them. It's such a good call. All right. Back to recipes. You know, we often ignore the last recipe in a book, but not on our show. On page 351 is a recipe for the Cleveland-ish cassata cake. Let's – it looks great. It actually – I do this question sometimes, and I'm like, okay, maybe it is a throwaway. This is not a throwaway. I don't want any throwaway recipes. No throwaways. I think a lot of people treat their dessert chapters often as a throwaway sometimes. Me? Sorry. Sorry, Dookie. Didn't mean to sell you out there. Not calling anyone out. I guess also like there's not many dessert chapters in Asian cookbooks.

35:31I know. They're challenging. You know? And I think I – my first book, Mooncakes and Milk Bread, you know, like it was a huge – lots of baking, lots of pastries. I was like, my dessert chapter, like I'm going to make it count, you know, especially the very last recipe. A lot of times when I structure the flow of my recipes within a chapter, sometimes they go by, I'm just thinking of like the banquet-worthy chapter, which has more like special meals. It goes by protein style. But a lot of my recipes go from easiest to hardest. I don't necessarily state that in the intro or anything like that. It's more subliminal.

36:06It's a vibe. You progress through, if you're cooking through the book, of course, linear as some people do. You get to get it's a well thought through concept. I like that. Yeah. So the last recipe in the dessert chapter is the Clevelandish cassata cake, which is a project, but it's not super hard. It's inspired by a cake that has made an appearance in my family in Ohio at various birthdays, graduations. It's my parents' wedding cake. So Cleveland. So cassata cake is like a Sicilian is historically a Sicilian cake. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a sponge cake, a cream of some sort, mascarpone, maybe some like liqueur soaked fruit in it.

36:45Yeah. In Cleveland, it's not that. In Cleveland, it's like a fluffy sponge cake. It's whipped cream and it's the strawberry filling that has a lot of it's like a syrup. Wait, a cream cake in the Midwest? Are you serious? Yeah. Wow. Wow. It's a shocker. Yeah. So that was the cake. And my mom really loves that cake, that style of cake. Yeah, it's great. And my parents actually got married in Hong Kong. And when they went to Hong Kong, she asked the bakers in Hong Kong to make this version of – oh, and there's also custard in there. I forgot about that. She asked the bakers in Hong Kong to make that version of cake for their wedding, which is not too far of a deviation to Chinese-style cream cakes.

37:30But the addition of, like, custard and, like, fresh strawberries and things like that is, like, slightly different. A little bit of a dramatic approach. Yeah. It's slightly different. And so the recipe in my book is, again, another iteration of that, just taking it like a little bit further to how I like it. Like there's a little bit of creme fraiche that's folded into the whipped cream that makes it easier, I think, to clad it. If you try to clad a cake with whipped cream, it can be a little messy. So I like it fortified. It looks amazing. Yeah. I hope people make it. Have you seen them? I've seen one person make it.

37:57Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you got somebody cooking the last recipe. Yes. Yeah. I feel like that could be like a whole study. Like who's actually making the very last recipe? I know. We should go there. I love it. Christina, this is Taste. We asked guests about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? Yes. The best fruit. I love a persimmon. Tell me about a perfect persimmon. A perfect persimmon. So I'm thinking, in my mind, I'm thinking of a Fuyu persimmon. And I want it to be ripe enough that it has a little bit of a give to it.

38:31It's a little bit soft, but it's not completely mushy. And no seeds. The worst vegetable. That's hard. I love like all vegetables. Yeah, but you got to answer it. Maybe a parsnip. Yeah. One of my least favorite. I don't know. I think because it's really hard to get a good parsnip. When it's good, it's really good. But a lot of times people don't cook parsnips very well. Yeah, the cooking technique is usually pureed and maybe not what we want. Yeah. The vegetal nature of it can be challenging. Good answer. I like that. Okay, tough one for you. I haven't written a baking book. The best dessert. The best dessert.

39:03I think requires a lot of components. I want a piece of cake or a brownie, something like that, slightly warmed up with a scoop of ice cream topped with something crunchy. Maybe it could even be granola or even like I've been playing around with like sweet panko breadcrumbs. Like I'm all about texture. So I want the ice cream that's cold. I want a cake or brownie that's hot and I want something crispy on top. Such a good answer. How do you think about sweetening panko? I love this idea. Because if you think about a savory panko, so a panko is just like breadcrumbs, often from Japanese milk bread.

39:41And for a savory one, you're either toasting it in butter, maybe adding some seasonings to it. So I've been doing like butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, sweet panko on top of ice cream. Amazing. So amazing. I haven't shared that with the internet yet. I mean, we're just riffing here. That's something I've been playing around with. It's the audio version. We're just riffing here. Yeah. We're riffing here. I guess subscribe to your newsletter. Yeah. Subscribe to the substat. Maybe you'll see it on there soon. Yeah, see it on there soon. Where do you want to travel in 2025? I, so many places. I want to make another trip to Hong Kong.

40:15I want to go to Taiwan. I want to go to Japan. And I also want to go back to Granada, Spain. My husband and I went there 10 years ago and we're thinking about doing a 10-year trip. Oh, I love that. When you travel, what's your style? Are you like hardcore restaurants? Are you kind of balancing out with culture? Definitely. Well, definitely a lot of architecture. We love to hit up all the iconic spots. My husband and I will just kind of wander around, just literally look at buildings. That's a fun thing for us to do. We definitely try to do a balance of making reservations at some places so we know that we can get in there, try to check it off.

40:50But then we allow time for what I like to call organic exploration. You know, we just see what happens. You're walking around like, that looks good. You walk in. I love traveling to places where I know someone there because I think it's really nice to kind of get like a local perspective there. I love going to Hong Kong with my dad. I went there with him two years ago. And I think I would just go to places I wouldn't go on my own. Oh, yeah. Got to get those sources. Got to get those inside looks. A couple more. Your favorite cookbook of all time. Oh, wow. Okay. The first one that came to mind is this cookbook called Grandma, Grandpa, Cook.

41:31I don't know. Have you heard of that book before? But the structure of the title makes me, it's like incredible. It makes a lot of questions. I'll send you a copy. I'll send you a link to it later. But I saw it at my friend owns a jewelry store in San Francisco and I saw it on her shelf. I'm like, what is this? And I got myself a copy later because it's incredible. It's the pages, half the pages is in Chinese characters and it's also in English. So you get this like amazing dichotomy of having both languages visually represented there. And the book features as one of those books that highlight like a few pages are highlighted on like one grandpa or grandma, you know, and they tell a little bit of their story.

42:05And then they tell and they share a recipe that means something to them. They're all the ones in here are very humble. like again home i was looking at it as research like humble chinese food like maybe it's like fermented or um i'm just thinking of my mom right now she's right there but like a salted fish pork cake or something like that or or something with like fermented bean curd and like vegetables like really really homey and i think it's just a really special book i've never seen a cookbook that has been presented in that style so that like both cultures could enjoy it yeah that's when your favorite sandwich?

42:42I love an eggplant parm. Oh, yeah. On a hoagie that's like light and crispy and like kind of chewy. The bread is so important in eggplant parm for me because you want to be able to like you want to be able to bite down effortlessly. Yeah. But I love that. But you want a little crunch because you're a crunch person. Yes. Yeah. You want texture, but you want a satisfying experience of biting down. Is there somewhere in San Francisco or the world that does it right? It's kind of hard for me to find. It's hard to find in the Bay Area. I was like, maybe there's one here that I could get that's a little bit better.

43:14But in San Francisco, the best one I have had is at this place called Lemoncello. It's one of our favorite places to get sandwiches in San Francisco. And their eggplant parm was really, really, really good. It's been a couple years. I'm like, I need to go back. You got to go back. I don't live in San Francisco proper anymore. I live in the East Bay. So it's like, am I coming in to get this sandwich? Maybe. Probably yes. Well, Christina and Joey, I hope you come back. This has been such a great time. Thank you so much for joining This is Taste. Thanks for having me here.

43:51Eleanor Wilkinson, welcome to This Is Taste. It's great to meet you. Thank you so much for having me. It's lovely to meet you too. This is going to be a fun chat because your book, One Pot, One Portion, is out now and we'll talk a lot about that. But you're in New York from London. Where are you dining out? Where are you eating? yeah i'm here i'm here by myself so it's great because it means i get to choose what i eat when i how much i eat which is it's a lot so i've only been here for four days and i feel like i've already eaten really good i have been i've done a bit of a mix of like casual and a bit fancier so there's been there's been bagels russ and daughters yeah i've done a couple pizza places Joe's Pizza.

44:33Yeah. Upside. Oh, you're going on a real crawl here. A little bit, a little bit. And then I've also been to, actually last night went to Sood. Is that how you say it? The Thai place? Yeah, yeah. That was incredible. Really hot reservation there. I know. We got lucky. We went kind of early. We got in. We just snuck in there. Yeah. That was brilliant. Would really recommend that. Also, Aggies. Is Aggies counter or Adjee's counter? Aggies. You said it right in the first time. Aggies counter. You made it up to Aggies. Yeah, went for brunch there. I love that Jeremy's a friend of the show, the chef there.

45:07Oh, amazing. I feel like I'm in the know. Tell us, how was your meal at Aggies? It was brilliant. Yeah, I heard the brunch was really good. So I went with a friend, a fellow cookbook author, and I had a really delicious, I can't remember the actual name for it, but it was like a biscuit with egg and cheese and hot sauce. and biscuits aren't really a thing back home. So it was so nice to have a really good one. A really good one. The American South, you know, that's where the biscuits come from. Yeah, I went to, I was in Nashville and New Orleans two years ago and so had some of them, but this one was different.

45:46This one was a bit lighter and flakier. It was great. You hit some spots. I like it. Thanks. Oh my God, I'm glad you think so. Are there good bagels in London? I think bagel culture is different. And I think maybe you'd have a bagel in London and be like, yeah, that's a good bagel. And then you have a bagel here and then you're like, oh, okay. That's the origin story right there. Bagels back home maybe aren't as good. They're a bit different, but they really are. They're better here for sure. Yeah. So let's talk about East Yorkshire where you grew up. It's not London. It's more rural. And I always love having guests on who are from not London, England.

46:27The not London, England guests. Yeah. Because there's such incredible foodways in England that we just don't get exposure to. What's it like growing up in East Yorkshire? It's very different to London. I'm from its rural countryside. There's a lot of farms, a lot of farmers. It feels slightly more traditional in terms of English food. It's kind of, it's not quite meat and two veg, but it's not dissimilar. dissimilar big comforting hearty family meals um and my parents both cooked a lot of homemade meals for us which was amazing so we were really used to to kind of those family dinners lasagnas and cottage pies shepherd's pies um macaroni cheese but always with both my parents are doctors and so there was always like a little healthy yeah a little healthy twist which was nice but then um so yeah i'd say there was a mix between this quite kind of hearty english food and then also some other things that maybe weren't quite as traditional so my parents lived in india for a year so we'd have curries and keggery and things that maybe other people weren't eating quite as much yeah sounds like a great upbringing it was yeah it was a really great upbringing very lucky what's the deal with yorkshire pudding i mean iconic number one completely delicious i will say that's one thing actually london cannot do a good roast yeah there's like you need to go up north if you want a proper roast a good yorkshire pudding with thick gravy and yeah like you just you can't get it but they are they are really really good yeah so so it's like a part of that sunday roast culture right the yorkshire pudding yeah for sure although yeah there's big debate as to whether you have it with every roast or whether it's only for a beef roast.

48:21Oh, right. Because a lot of people are very, very much like you cannot have a Yorkshire pudding with chicken or pork. It's only with beef. Whereas I'm kind of of the opinion that if you can add a Yorkshire pudding, like why wouldn't you add a Yorkshire pudding? So stick it up. Yeah, if it's available, you're going to have it. Exactly. Like don't, don't, don't like hold back. Exactly. Why would you deprive yourself? Yeah, why deprive? So your book is really cool and unique. You know, it's, it's about cooking for one cooking solo and I wanted to get an idea about the perfect recipe I know you have many in your book but what makes a perfect meal for one I think it's a good question and I think for me it's all about making the process of cooking for one enjoyable because that's a huge barrier for people is that cooking for one feels like so much effort it feels like it's not worth it you might as well just you know make something that will feed you for the whole week so I think for me the perfect meal is about kind of taking away those barriers so it actually needs to be easy and accessible and probably not take that long the result will be worth the work um and I think that that's a huge part of cooking for one and then everything kind of tastes better when you've enjoyed making it so that's kind of the first thing and then other than that I think it's the best part about it is that it's really unique and individual to the person making it and so totally from a flavor perspective that's about like checking in with yourself and figuring out what you fancy that day what you want to eat you know is it something really comforting is it something really fresh um and kind of the perfect meal therefore changes every day um but as long as long as it's always easy um you can kind of have fun with it and experiment and do whatever you like and be a bit selfish about it which i love yeah i mean can eating for one just be like a bowl of cottage cheese i mean yeah we'd maybe add something to the cottage there you go like you're you're like the the expert you know i mean like don't get me wrong i love like beans on toast yeah it's great and it's a classic for a reason and if that's what you fancy then that's the perfect meal um i think what i try and do with my recipes is maybe bring a full kind of well rounded flavor profile but using either hacks like or those kind of ingredients that bring bring flavor without having to do anything to them so you know if you want to eat a bowl of cottage cheese fine but maybe we'll add some salt and some honey and some hot sauce and oh hot sauce yeah i love or love cottage cheese with a pickle yeah like on a indian pickle or Or like more of a European style?

51:05Like a gherkin. A gherkin, yeah. A gherkin pickle. A little cornichon, actually. Cornichon, okay. So you get a bit of crunch with your cottage cheese. And then actually I love it on a... It's kind of gross, actually, but a salt and vinegar rice cake with cottage cheese, cornichons, maybe a little slice of ham. I'm all about having the acidity, having that ham, having a little bit of condiment on there. I'm sorry I even brought up cottage cheese. I don't even know if you like it. Cottage cheese is having a moment. I know, right? She's kind of the it girl at the moment. She's everywhere. She's everywhere.

51:37Yeah, cottage cheese fans right in. I think I'd like some more ideas. Yeah. Well, let's talk about when you shop for one. You know, I think one big barrier for cooking for one is this idea of food waste. You know, our grocery stores are, at least in the States, they sell you a lot of stuff. And when you're cooking for one, you don't want to waste a lot of stuff. Like food waste is a huge problem. Yeah. So how do you think about shopping for these meals for one? It's really hard. And I think it's people cooking for themselves or living by themselves are quite overlooked in a lot of society. And I think you see that in supermarket produce.

52:14And whilst, you know, it's great that things come in family packs and that probably makes it easier for families and more affordable. When it comes to cooking for one, you are then left with either, you know, three chicken breasts that you don't know what to do with or like a whole pack of ground beef or whatever it is. And so for me, for every recipe in the book, there's an ingredient or there's a recipe pairing which takes at least one of the same ingredients and uses it again in a completely different way, a completely different flavor profile. And that was really important to me because if you're not kind of solving the whole problem, you're not really solving any of the problem.

52:52And so you need to, yeah, you can't be left with a ton of vegetables left in your fridge going bad. so I try and create recipes that use similar ingredients but don't feel like you're eating exactly the same meal yeah and then what I also do I create meal plans for people so I take five different one pot one portion recipes that use similar ingredients I write the shopping list and I tell you you know if there's any swaps to do yeah so that you can have one weekly food shop, but five completely different meals and hopefully like minimal waste at the end. Like that a lot. Is there like a vegetable I'm putting in the spot that is like perfect for buying that big bag of it and then you can incorporate into a lot of different dishes?

53:39Oh, I mean, frozen vegetables can actually be a really great option because if they're good quality, they're picked and frozen fresh, then actually they can just be a great way to minimize food waste other than that i'd say my most used is probably something like broccoli like you can kind of add broccoli to everything and it and it tastes good so i mean my wife tamar and i we have broccoli challenge we'll buy like the biggest possible bag like literally and we're like we're we're this is we're this is going to be done by the end of the week yeah and we we like yeah slide it into everything yeah i think the hardest one is maybe like spinach yeah you can only buy spinach in huge bags.

54:20I know. You're kind of finding new, innovative ways to chuck spinach into something. You gotta, sometimes you just gotta juice it, right? Yeah, exactly. You just gotta juice it. Yeah. What drives you to write a recipe? Like when you went to culinary school, you got education, your book is, it covers the swath of cuisines. I mean, it's really cool. But like what, when you're thinking, when you're sitting down and thinking about writing a recipe, what drives you? I think it really varies. Sometimes inspiration comes from a meal that I've eaten in a restaurant sometimes it comes from you know just two flavors that I think might work together other times I think when I'm cooking for myself when it's not necessarily developing a recipe for work often it is a fridge raid meal so it's whatever's in the fridge okay how can I put this together in a way that's not just you know pasta um but what's interesting is that then I think that's kind of the way that I'll make something just myself and then I'll be oh, that was good.

55:17I could probably rework that and redevelop that into a recipe that I could share with other people and they would enjoy that because they probably have similar ingredients left in their fridge. Other times, I think sometimes if people leave me a comment or send me a message saying their situation and they'll say, I don't know, I'm a doctor and I only have 20 minutes to create dinner and your recipes have really helped. then that kind of sticks with me. Then I'm like, right, I need to do more 20-minute meals. And then it's, you know, the inspiration kind of comes from trying to solve the problem, if that makes sense.

55:55No, definitely. I mean, 20-minute meal, that's a skill. Yeah. Yeah. One portion and 20 minutes. Yeah, it's putting a lot of pressure on you. That's quite a lot of, that's a tight framework. What's one 20-minute from the book that comes to mind, like, right away? Oh, I mean, one of the best is the creamy green linguine, which is actually uses broccoli and spinach. you cook it with your linguine in the pasta water. And then it's almost like a carbonara-esque sauce so that you don't have to cook it. You just add it in afterwards. It takes, I mean, it takes the same amount of time as it takes to cook linguine, basically.

56:28So it's 15 minutes. So you're doing on the range, you're doing like the sauce in the pan, you're boiling the dry pasta with the vegetables at the same time. Yeah, exactly. Pulling out the veg, putting it in the pan. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. and then mixing egg and pecorino, fresh black pepper with the pasta water to create that kind of silky emulsified sauce, mix it all together, a bit of chili on top. Yeah. And you're kind of good to go and you've got a really great meal. Absolutely smart. I mean, that's a really great way. And I think it's a great reminder that you can definitely boil things with your pasta.

57:01Oh, for sure. Like use that single pot wisely. Exactly, exactly. Just adjust your timing. Like start the pasta slightly sooner and then add in the veg or whatever way. There's always kind of ways around things to make things one pot. And that's kind of the way my brain works now. It's like, right, something would normally take three, but I can do it in one. You can do it in one. That's my challenge. It's what you do. I love it. Well, let's talk about lasagna for one because I think I saw that recipe. I'm like, okay, we got to talk about this because I think there's a lot of stigma about lasagna being a multi-day process or even all day.

57:32Here at Taste, we actually published a lasagna cookbook. Oh, my goodness. My former colleague, Anna Heasel, wrote it. It's terrific. And I think she maybe did a one-er, but what's your single serving lasagna recipe? So I love this recipe. It's one of my favorite recipes in a book, and I think it really epitomizes what the book is about. It's about taking something that's traditionally a huge family dish that does take a couple of hours and five or six pots and reworking it so that you still get the same flavor and the same feeling that you get from eating a lasagna. just in a simpler way. So I think it's potentially controversial.

58:17I don't think the Italians love my recipe, but that's okay. The Italians have commented? Oh, yeah. Oh, I've had some voice notes from angry Italians telling me. Do they use the Italian gesture emoji? Oh, no, but I can hear it in their voice. I know that they're doing it as they're saying it. But I love the recipe. And it basically, rather than it being a layered lasagna, You create your, you kind of meet ragu and then you use fresh designer sheets folded into the sauce so that the pasta cooks in the sauce. And then instead of a bechamel sauce, a white sauce on top, we're using mascarpone, which is a soft, creamy cheese, which melts down on top of the ragu and genuinely creates a really similar effect.

59:05and the whole thing you can make the whole thing in about in definitely less than 30 minutes if not you know 25 minutes which for lasagna is kind of mind-blowing and i think when you try it if you try it i don't know it's it's hard to go back to to traditional no definitely i mean you just like crave that that the layering of pasta the best you know the the creaminess that it was formerly I mean, bechamel is now a swap. And you're baking it too? So it's done on the hob and then it's just finished in the grill, in the broiler. Oh, yeah, the quick broil. Yeah, exactly. Just to kind of melt the, the mascarpone kind of melts and then the mozzarella on top just bubbles up.

59:45But other than that, it's all, it's on the hob. And yeah, I think it's an example of, I think there's a time and a place for spending hours cooking something. And that's a really beautiful process to be enjoyed. And I, don't get me wrong, I love that. I love making things that take hours. But, you know, on a Tuesday night, you're not going to do that, especially when you're only cooking for one. You're not going to wash up all these dishes at the end. And so this is an alternative. It's not the only option, but it's a really great option. It's a beautiful option. And I must just say, hob is so much better than range or stovetop.

1:00:19It's quite cute, isn't it? It's so cute. And if I incorporated it with an American guest, I would probably be laughed at. But I might just do that. I love that one. Do it. French onion soup for one. Okay. I landed on this recipe. I was like, this is really smart. We tend to think that you have to caramelize the onions for a long time and it takes like hours and hours or, you know, an hour. But you've simplified it. What's your French onion soup for one recipe? Well, it is actually fairly similar in terms of the processes is the same as the traditional French onion soup. And the caramelizing of the onions is still really important.

1:00:57That is where the flavor comes from. But the difference is you're cooking, I can't remember how many onions I use, maybe two, as opposed to two kilos of onions. And so just by scaling it down, you're cutting down the time to, I mean, you kind of want minimum 30 minutes on your onions. If you have an hour, leave them for an hour. Yeah. But if you were cooking it for five or six people, you'd be like an hour and a half, two hours just sweating down the onions. I mean, you swing the onions for hours and then you're just chopping the onions for real French onion soup at scale. It's like, that's a project.

1:01:33It's a lot. It's a lot. And this one, other than that, it really is quite a traditional process. But there's just something so nice about it being simplified. At the end, you have one bowl. I'm kind of averse to leftover soup as well. Like, I know everyone loves a little meal prep soup. Yeah. But there's something about reheated soup that I'm just not. I love this controversial take. I know, I'm sorry. Controversial take, but I'm going to dig into that a little bit. Because the perception is that soup is best the next day, or sauces are best the next day. But you have a point of view. What's bothering you about the next day soup?

1:02:10I think it makes me, maybe it just makes me a little bit sad. I don't know. I think with a sauce, maybe different if you're then mixing it into, you know, pasta. But when it's just a bowl of soup, when you're taking it out of a Tupperware and then you're putting it and I'm like, oh, it was better yesterday. It's just always better. Fair. Or maybe it's just that I get bored of soup more easily. You just don't want to eat the same soup. Maybe I just don't. Because I'd happily eat reheated pasta because I'd rather eat pasta than soup, probably. For sure. So, yeah, maybe I just don't like soup that much.

1:02:45I'm into it. You've explained it. You've made your point. I like it. All right. Sticky toffee pudding, one of the great British dishes in the canon. We see it a lot in New York now. We have this little bit of a British invasion happening with restaurants. Truly one of the best desserts in the world. It really is. What's your sticky toffee for one? So, yeah, sticky toffee pudding is truly one of the most comforting meals you can ever make. One of the most comforting puddings. normally you would create you know the cake batter and then you'd make a sauce separately but my recipe uses a technique that you see in a lot of self-sourcing puddings so you make your cake batter you leave it raw in your baking dish and then you put the ingredients for the sauce on the top so you put little knobs of butter on top of the cake you sprinkle over sugar and then you pour over boiling water and it's honestly magical I kind of wish you could bake it in like a see-through dish to see what was going on because the sauce somehow mixes with the butter and the sugar and it kind of cascades down the side of the sponge and creates a little pool of sauce at the bottom but without disrupting what's going on with the actual sponge itself and it's honestly incredible there's the same same technique as my self-sourcing chocolate mug cake, which is a five minute microwave job.

1:04:11But you get the incredible chocolate sauce at the bottom. And yeah, my sticky toffee is the same. And it's, again, the result is exactly the same in terms of flavor and the comfort that you get. It's just done in a different way. And I absolutely love it. Eleanor, tell me about the deep pleasure of making a dessert for one from scratchy there's got to be an emotional connection you have with this practice yeah for sure I think the fact that there's always a reason to not have dessert there's always especially when it's just you there's always a reason to be like oh I don't you know I don't need it or I don't have the time or I could just have a piece of chocolate there's always a reason to say no and so when you say yes and you think no I'm gonna spend half an hour 20 minutes 10 minutes just making something that I'm then gonna sit on my sofa under a blanket you know my candles are on I'm watching a film and I've got this dessert there's something about holding a dessert in like a tiny little pot it's just for you and it's it's this really like romantic self-care aspect um and I think it's almost this reminder to just be like no I deserve I deserve the nice things in life and I would I would make it for somebody else so why wouldn't I make it for myself and yeah saying yes to to yourself in the form of sticky toffee bidding which I think potentially sounds a little bit a little bit deep but it is i think it's not it's deep and it's a it's really well said i think there's something about cooking for yourself that it's it's it is self-care a lot of folks listen to show like cook for you know stress stress relief yeah or just to distract from other outside forces yeah and ending the meal with a dessert that maybe you make after you've completed your meal right you could make this after you've done the dishes even yeah or maybe you're only having dessert for dinner you know preach right preach very cool right very cool i feel like like there are no rules when it comes to cooking for one you can do exactly what you want to do and nobody is there to judge you no one's there and that's beautiful beautiful and and i have to ask about tartatin for one another pure grail uh dessert recipe i love that one yeah again a really classic classic recipe which has a very classic technique um my recipe again mostly follows that we're just using a couple of hacks you know we're using store-bought pastry rather than making our own pastry because you know store-bought pastry is great it's totally great yeah and no one has a sheater like they can make like their own pastries exactly exactly and then when it comes to the apples you can kind of choose whether you want to keep them a little bit chunkier and you get a bit more of a bite to your tart-tartan or you can really thinly slice them and they melt down to this like jammy, almost like apple compote that mixes with the caramel and gets all chewy at the edges.

1:07:17And it's just glorious. And again, that process of flipping it out of the pan, plating it up just for yourself, it's just, it's romantic, isn't it? It's very, very Parisian. Yeah, it is. and talk about self-care as having one of those guys at the end of the day. Exactly, a little dollop of ice cream and you're pretty much in heaven, aren't you? What's the ice cream of choice? Are you doing Haagen-Dazs in the UK? Yeah, do you know what? Haagen-Dazs is good. Any just, we have some really good like UK ice creams. Like there's really good Scottish vanilla ice creams. There's good Cornish clotted cream ice creams.

1:07:52Anything with good quality vanilla or maybe like a little bit of sea salt in there. Yeah, I think you can't really go wrong. You can't go wrong with that. Eleanor, on This is Taste, we asked guests about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Are you ready? I'm so ready. The best fruit? A ripe summer peach. Oh my gosh. Like, what are you going to do with it? There's nothing, just nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. I'm going to sit there and I'm going to bite into this juicy peach and all the juices are going to drip down my hands and it's going to be messy and it's i think there's genuinely no better taste or feeling than being like wow that was the best peach i've ever had in the summertime too it just reminds you of that yeah and even if you're not you know if it's not sunny where you are but you eat a really good peach you're like transported to the beach in italy or something even if you're in gray rainy london the worst vegetable oh easy mushrooms i hate them okay this is controversial there's a lot of like mushrooms are like foundational i know but i'm not judging here no well i've if it makes it any better i've really really tried to like them like i've tried i was vegan for like six years and mushrooms are such a yeah staple for a lot of things and i just i can't get on board with them like i just think they're kind of gross and people will be like oh well try enoki try this try that i'm sorry i don't like any of them okay let's like do a little here so what are you feeling when you have a mushroom in your you know in your kitchen like what's what's causing you to get the ick from the mushroom i'm really curious it's a good question because actually chopping mushrooms i love the feeling of chopping mushrooms like they're really satisfying slice as soon as i think maybe um i if you have like an english fry up a breakfast people often cook mushrooms either in the pan or in the microwave with butter and maybe a bit of garlic and I just cannot stand the smell.

1:09:55It's not for me. And then, yeah, the texture I don't love. But it's mostly the taste and the smell. I'm just... Yeah, you're just like... I can so do that. There's one mushroom recipe in the book and that was... That's it. That's what you're getting. That's all you're getting in your books. What is your typical breakfast? I think it's normally some kind of egg with bread. Probably a scrambled egg on sourdough with a bit of crispy chili oil. I eat breakfast quite late, like 10, 11. So I like something pretty substantial. Or I love like a soft flour tortilla with a fried egg, chili oil, spring onions.

1:10:35But yeah, eggs. You can't go wrong with eggs and bread. Your savory eggs. Always savory. I'm a big, yeah, savory always for breakfast. The best dessert? Apple crumble. Apple crumble. Always a million times over. it would be my my desert island dessert it's but i'm quite specific and i'm not sure this is quite a british reference but school dinners um so yeah the lunches that you would have at school there's a very specific type of apple crumble which is kind of stodgy it's about 50 % fruit 50 % crumble kind of stodgy and like that's what i want i don't want oats i don't want cinnamon i don't want anything fancy in my crumble i want stodge that re that ratio you're pushing it there I'm into that.

1:11:21Absolutely. And like a hefty amount of custard with it. So when you're craving fast food, what's your go-to spot? I think it would probably be a burger. And I have to say, like there's some good burgers in and around London, but I love a Five Guys. I think you really can't go wrong. If you want proper fast food, a Five Guys burger and their fries are really, really good. The fries are great. The fries are really good. Five guys made it across the pond. Oh, yeah. Wow. Big time. Yeah. They're everywhere now. Yeah. Your favorite city outside of the UK to visit for food? So I was in Malaysia last summer, and I think Kuala Lumpur is an amazing food city.

1:12:10There's so much flavor. I love kind of Malaysian cuisine, Malaysian flavors. So I'd say Kuala Lumpur. And then I have to say, being in New York for the last few days, it's kind of up there again for me. Like it's quite similar a food scene to London and it's great. Eggie's counter will do that for you. Yeah, right? Yeah, stopping by there will make it a great visit. Yeah, that and a big slice of pizza and you're good to go. Last one, your favorite sandwich. Okay, I actually have a sandwich formula which can then be applied to like any sandwich if you want to hear it. So it has to be a meat, a cheese, a crunch, a sauce, and ideally something like pickled.

1:12:54So my probably ultimate one would be a steak sandwich with a melted cheese. We've got chimichurri, which is kind of the sauce and the pickle because it's a little bit vinegary. And then I want crisps in my sandwich, like salt and vinegar crisps, chips. Yeah, yeah. Because I think you need all the textures and all the flavors. So, yeah, something pretty hefty. I love that idea of the ratio. Yeah. Have you had barbecue potato chips ever or crisps? Barbecue? Yeah, the flavor of barbecue. I mean, we have barbecue ones back home. But maybe they're better here. Maybe I should get some on my way out.

1:13:33Maybe get them on the way out to the airport now. I was wondering. I love that. I love putting a crisp on a sandwich. Oh, yeah, it's the best. It's the best. and you have to squish it down a little bit so they all break up. You get that little sound. Yeah. I love that. Eleanor Wilkinson, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thanks for having me.

1:13:55This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Logo and guest illustrations by Ellie Skrzat. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.