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Podcast Episode Notes: This Is TASTE - Episode 562: Third Culture Cooking Is American Cooking with Zaynab Issa
Podcast Overview
- Title: This Is TASTE
- Description: A podcast featuring lively conversations about food, home cooking, and culture. Hosts Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard interview various guests from the food world and discuss their experiences and perspectives.
Episode Details
- Episode Title: Third Culture Cooking Is American Cooking with Zaynab Issa
- Guest: Zaynab Issa - a cookbook author, recipe developer, and content creator based in Brooklyn, New York.
- Main Topics:
- Blending of East African and South Asian roots with American culinary classics.
- The debut cookbook "Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation".
- Building a perfect dinner party menu.
- Additional Guest: Holly Brickley, author of the new novel "Deep Cuts".
- Main Topics with Holly:
- Discussion of the early 2000s music scene.
- The novel's exploration of musical transitions and its Hollywood adaptation by A24.
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Key Themes and Discussions
Zaynab Issa's Culinary Journey
- Cultural Background:
- Zaynab's heritage as a child of Koja immigrants from East Africa.
- Influences from her grandmother and family, who played a central role in her cooking experience.
- Cooking Philosophy:
- Emphasizes the joy in the cooking process rather than the end product.
- Shares the importance of food as a central communal activity growing up.
- Third Culture Cooking:
- Concept of "Third Culture Cooking" as a blend of her diverse cultural influences.
- Highlights the uniqueness of each individual's third culture and the contextual elements of fusion cooking.
- Cookbook Insights:
- Focus on creating accessible recipes suitable for a variety of occasions.
- Discussion on recipe development process, including cross-testing and precise writing.
Holly Brickley and "Deep Cuts"
- Novel Overview:
- "Deep Cuts" portrays a character navigating her relationship with music and the cultural shifts of the early 2000s.
- Explores themes of nostalgia, personal growth, and the evolution of musical tastes.
- Connection to Music:
- The significance of music in personal relationships.
- Discussion on how technology has changed music consumption, from CDs to streaming services.
- Hollywood Adaptation:
- Exciting news about the film adaptation of "Deep Cuts" by A24, starring Saoirse Ronan and Austin Butler.
- Insights into the casting and creative direction for the adaptation.
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Fun Food & Music Moments
- Food Favorites:
- Zaynab's favorite dishes and experiences at Monkey Bar, such as mac and cheese and spicy rigatoni.
- Holly's nostalgic reflections on Berkeley's food culture and her personal eating habits during college.
- Rapid Fire Questions:
- Zaynab and Holly share their favorite foods, cookbooks, and restaurants, highlighting their personal tastes and nostalgic connections to food and memories.
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Closing Thoughts
- Culinary and Cultural Fusion:
- The episode emphasizes the richness of cultural influences in food and the evolution of culinary practices.
- Encourages listeners to explore their culinary identity and the stories behind their cooking.
- Listener Engagement:
- Encouragement to leave reviews on platforms like Apple and Spotify to support the podcast.
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Resources Mentioned
- Zaynab Issa's Cookbook: [Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation](https://www.tastecooking.com)
- Holly Brickley's Novel: [Deep Cuts](https://www.tastecooking.com)
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These notes encapsulate the essence of the episode, highlighting the culinary discussions and cultural insights shared by Zaynab Issa and Holly Brickley, while also connecting their experiences with broader themes of identity and creativity in food and music.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Making sure that the table of contents felt varied very much so did guide the recipes that ended up being in the book. And I really wanted to make the book feel like something that you could pick up on any occasion, whether you were like exhausted and barely wanted to cook or you're like trying to throw a party for 50 people. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.
0:59Zainab Issa is a cookbook author, recipe developer, and content creator based in Brooklyn. Formerly a food editor at Bon Appetit, Zainab just released a great debut cookbook, Third Culture Cooking, Classic Recipes for a New Generation. It's so fun having Zainab into the studio to talk about blending her East African and South Asian roots with Americana classics, building the perfect dinner party menus, and more. Also on the show, Matt has a fun conversation with Holly Brickley. Holly is the author of a great new novel, Deep Cuts, and they talk about the music scene of the early 2000s that so informs this book.
1:42Zainab Issa, this is Taze. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. We were just chatting off mic about your post-podcast dinner plans, and I think you should tell the world because I'm very jealous and I wish I could crash. I'm fasting today, so I'm looking forward to my dinner, which will be at Monkey Bar. I'm going to have iftar with a few friends, and the food there is just always solid. Yeah, what's your order at Monkey Bar? The mac and cheese is fantastic. The shrimp cocktail is pretty good. The spicy rigatoni is also very good. And the prime rib French dip is fantastic.
2:18Okay, clearly you've been planning to order. Yeah, I'm a menu stalker. I need to go back to the mac and cheese. Like what makes it so special? I think the blend of cheeses they use is just ideal. It's not too sharp. It's pretty mellow and it's very creamy. And the layer of brulee cheese on the top is not too thick. And so it's baked and it has that extra cheese on top. Yep. Wow. OK, I feel bad for making you talk about food on a day that you're fasting. No, I love it. I used to watch Food Network exclusively in Ramadan when I was younger. Like that would be the only thing I like. I still I still do watch like more food content than usual when I'm fasting.
2:57Do you feel like it's kind of scratching an itch even if you can't eat it? 100 percent like I'm watching it's making me hungry like the physical reaction is definitely not helping but like in my mind I feel like I'm interacting with the food in a way in the way that I want to be I'm very curious what your food network rotation was like were you when you're growing up watching who were you seeing definitely Ina Garten she was like the one that we would keep replaying Sandra Lee we would watch that like semi-homemade um like style is very much so still something I think about and it's influenced me for sure.
3:30But we used to just like laugh at how much alcohol she would put in everything. Yeah. All the butter too. Yeah. And then Rachel Ray, sometimes that one like always felt a little bit more utilitarian in a way that like just didn't apply. We were like kids and 30 minutes felt like like a 30 minute meal didn't feel like something that was useful to us. Yeah, what is time? Yeah, exactly. And then Giada De Laurentiis, for sure. All like the pasta she would make, we would like me and my siblings would be drooling over. Heavy hitters the whole way. Yeah. I was really into Iron Chef as a kid. Did you ever watch that?
4:10Yes, of course. We watched it. Competition shows always freaked me out a little bit. Yeah, you wouldn't ever do one? Definitely not. But I love, I did love watching them. I especially loved watching the like baking like competition shows that used to be on like really late at night. Those were great. I feel like I was into Chopped and this idea of if I was given a Jolly Rancher and fish sauce, like what would I make out of that? Chopped is fun for that. I like that part, too. That like creative thinking part. It's more like cooking on a timer. That freaks me out. Yeah, we don't have to get into that.
4:44While we're talking about kind of childhood and growing up, I always like to ask my guests, just give a little bit of context into who they are and kind of how their food perspective has been shaped. If there's a food memory you have from growing up that you think is impactful to you. Yeah. OK, so I'm the child of Koja immigrants. So my parents immigrated from East Africa to America in the 80s. And then I grew up in New Jersey and my grandmother lived with us and she really shaped my perspective of food. And I think having so many people in the house, I also have three siblings. And for a lot of that time, my grandmother's other daughter, my aunt, was with us and my grandfather.
5:29So there was like eight people in the house minimum growing up. And I think having so many people in the house made food such a central part of like being in the house. The kitchen was like where we were all the time. I have so many food memories in my mom's kitchen. But I just remember like being my grandma's sous chef, like just sitting there doing all of the chopping that she couldn't do with her like arthritis hands. And I think that's like what really made me fall in love with cooking is that I love like I actually find the labor behind cooking to be really joyful. Meditative. Yeah, exactly.
6:05it's like it's cathartic and also I think the process I've like become obsessed with the process of things like the finished dish doesn't really excite me as much as like doing all the steps and I think that's from just spending so much time doing all the steps with her so she really made me love cooking and food and then it was just something that was constantly around in my family both my parents are foodies I would say I'm very curious did you volunteer to be your grandma's sous chef or was it just kind of foisted upon you? I think it was just something to do. Yeah. I think I was like a busybody child.
6:41You know what I mean? And I was I would get bored. And that was like what was happening. You know what I mean? The TV was on in the living room and I could either like fight one of my siblings for the remote or I could like like meander into the kitchen and like get like a fresh roti with butter and sugar that she was probably making. Easy choice. Exactly. Do you know if your grandma had a strategy for cooking for large groups of people or was it just kind of her default way of cooking? It was like my grandma woke up and started like cooking was just like all she ever did. It was like she woke up, started cooking.
7:14There were things that we would eat on Thursday that were in the works for Monday. Like it was very much so like her own restaurant in a lot of ways. Yeah. Which like thinking back, I'm like, damn, like I can't even have like I can't even do that, you know? Well, not yet, but maybe when you're a grandma. I always feel really like cooking is such a lifelong skill. I look forward to aging because if I think my food is good now, then imagine when I'm grandma age. 100%. I do think I will be able to like pull some some things off by then, I hope at least. So you said that your family are Koja immigrants.
7:49Can you tell me a little bit about like what that means and if there are any kind of foods or techniques that you think of as being central to that? It's a group of Indians that converted from Hinduism to Islam and then their migration pattern is kind of varied. But there's a lot of them that migrated from India to East Africa over the generations, both through British colonial rule and just for trade reasons. That whole like between Asia, the Middle East and East Africa, because there are so many coastal towns, there's a lot of like the spice trade routes and all of that connect to those regions.
8:26And so my parents belong to that ethnic group. I consider myself part of that ethnic group as well. And then the American bit is obviously because they immigrated here. Both of them, like their entire family is immigrated, actually. So we don't have very many people still in East Africa. We do have some family in India. And my dad does have extended, both my parents have extended family in East Africa. But their immediate families all moved. And then you also did like a zine project of Kojo recipes, right? Yeah. So that was in college. That was my thesis project. And it was very much so like the intention was more to like shed light on this like underrepresented cuisine and really just like preserve the culture while also talking about the value of sharing.
9:14And so I recorded all of those recipes. They were my mom's and my grandma's recipes. And that was kind of my foray into like official recipe development. Danny Dillon, who was at the wing at the time, helped me kind of get those recipes into shape for the zine. And then my professor encouraged me to publish it. And that's kind of how my like career in food media started. I really like that your career in food media came from this desire of preservation and like honoring history. I think that like so much of contemporary food storytelling like should be about like talking about these ways that traditions have developed and changed over time and then in your book you've kind of continued to do that in different ways yeah which is really special no that's like that was one of the main goals of the cookbook but I also wanted it to serve like a more useful purpose and I feel like a lot of the recipes in the zine I found like that I made them on certain occasions because of like the time commitment or the ingredients like there was always something that made them less accessible.
10:17And I think that's really lovely that you like reserve them for special occasions. But in the book, I also wanted to figure out a way to incorporate those stories into more regular use cases, you know. And that's kind of where like third culture cooking came in, because whereas the zine was very much so Koja cooking, it didn't really speak to like my style of cooking and like the way I cook and what's what I'm interested in. And so I found that like I was like, OK, I consider myself like a third culture kid. And that means that like my cooking is also third culture, like naturally. And it was it's it's definitely something that's been explored.
10:55But I think the idea that like each person's like third culture is unique to them and their story is something that I really wanted to highlight throughout the book. And this is my experience as a Koja American with my culture and other cultures that I've learned through living in America and from traveling. And that might look different to someone else. But I do think that there's so much like shared space when you are a third culture kid and when you do consider yourself someone that's a third culture cook. For me, there is like there is an element of a fusion there, but it's it's not fusion that's devoid of context.
11:34So like I consider third culture cooking to be like a contextualized version of fusion food. Right. I think fusion, when some people hear that, it harkens back to the specific like 2010s, like maybe white guy who's like mashing up two cultures like for no reason other than it sounds like a good menu item and not from like the lived experience of the way that we all cook and how that changes. Exactly. And I think contextualizing it makes it like appropriate and even interesting. You know what I mean? And delicious. Yeah, it is good food. Yeah, I mean, I was going through the book and I really wanted to make everything, which I think is like such a fun experience.
12:10And I'm curious if there are any recipes you think really like exemplify the book or like your own kind of third culture point of view. Yeah. OK, so the like one of my favorite like photos in the book is actually a recipe that I feel like really is like a third culture recipe. And it's the Jugu scones, which are basically peanut scones. And they're like a combination between like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Jugu Pak, which is like a like a cake rusk, a peanut cake rusk, which is like kind of like a biscotti as well. Cake rusk is like very dry cake. Yes, exactly. And it's like best dipped in tea so that it rehydrates.
12:47I've never been a huge fan, but I do love a scone. And so I applied that flavor profile to a scone and then put butter and jam in it. And it feels like it was picked from so many different influences, but also hits all of those familiar notes. And yeah, that's like a pretty great example of like a third culture recipe. Yeah, I like that recipe because I love peanut as a flavor in everything and especially in desserts. And when I was looking through the book and I saw that, I realized that I don't think I've ever had a peanut scone before, which seems crazy because you put jam on scones. You could very reasonably put peanut butter on a scone or put peanuts in it, but somehow it was not something that I had encountered and immediately I knew that it was something I wanted to try.
13:30I love that. I'm curious how you went about coming up with a list of recipes for the book. There are so many different occasions and kinds of recipes within it. Did you have an organized process? Yes. So actually setting up the table of contents took so long, like three months longer than I thought it was going to take. I had like a list of like 250 ideas. Like I just have like an ongoing note where anytime something hits, I write it down. and I think my experience in editorial taught me to kind of cut out repetition and organize things accordingly and so I just kept like kept going through the list and like okay no there's three short rib recipes that's too many we only need one okay you don't have a ground beef recipe make sure you get that in there like making sure that the table of contents felt varied very much so did guide the recipes that ended up being in the book there's so many recipes that I didn't end up including that, like, I still feel a desire to explore.
14:31They just didn't make sense within the context of the lineup. And I really wanted to make the book feel like something that you could pick up on any occasion, whether you were like exhausted and barely wanted to cook or you're like trying to throw a party for 50 people. Yeah, I think the tone is really ambitious. And like some people do like weeknight meals cookbook or some people do an entertaining cookbook. And as somebody that, you know, has gotten to know you through food events in New York and things like that. Like, you definitely have range as a person. And so I think it makes sense that the book is kind of hitting on those different use cases at the same time.
15:04Yeah. And this way, like for people who like, I feel like especially like in my house, for example, my both my grandma and my mom, Fantastic Cooks, my sister's Fantastic Cooks cookbooks, not really something we had. They had their cookbooks where they were writing down their recipes. And there was like so many of those. And there were like three or four other cookbooks, the Betty Crocker cookbook in like the binder was in our house. But really, it wasn't like a way we grew up cooking. So I wanted to make sure for those people that are less familiar with cookbooks and don't have like quite the collection that they could just buy this one and feel like there were options within it.
15:40Yeah, I really appreciate that. And you mentioned a little bit about taking an editorial sensibility to coming up with the recipes and you worked at Bon Appetit in the kitchen. And I'm curious, maybe especially coming from a background where you weren't necessarily growing up using cookbooks at home or using recipes. I'm sure your mom and grandma just have the recipes in their head. Like, what did you kind of learn about the editorial recipe process? I think also from shifting from content creator to food editor, it taught me so much about the formal recipe development process. And it's really changed the way I approach recipes, whether they're for like something more editorial, like a cookbook, for example, or for social, just that like sitting on an idea for a minute, like really forming it.
16:24And I think you learn to do that through the pitching process. Right. And then when it comes to actually actually developing the recipe, minimum making it like three times just to make sure that, you know, it very, very well. and paying attention to different things each time you're cooking it, whether it's timing, whether it's like the visual cues, all of that. And I think the more you make something, the better you get at explaining it. And I think that really shows through in recipe writing, like how specific are you able to get? And I think that really does affect the end user's results. And while like you can't really control it necessarily, everyone cooks differently.
17:04I think a good recipe really does mitigate the risk. And that shows through. And that's something that you can really hone with the amount of times you've cooked a recipe. And then cross-testing, which is something that also came into my life through the editorial process and something I did for the book that I don't really do for my social recipes. I'll just make them a few times over myself. But with the book and editorial recipes, cross-testing is a huge part of the process. It's so valuable. And making sure other people have the same success that you've had when cooking through your recipes is super important.
17:37Otherwise, like writing the head notes, I think all of the writing in the book, like I'm so glad that I had that training because there's there's just so much to get into with the cookbook in terms of writing. I think that part, nobody really talks about it. Yeah, totally. And I think what you say about cross-testing is interesting because I think if it's like a free recipe that's being given in a more casual format, like an Instagram caption, like there's maybe a different, you still want it to work, but there's a different expectation than when it's a book that you've invested in and you've opened up the page to and you really hope it's going to turn out.
18:10Yeah, 100%. I think that like the value proposition is totally different. Mm-hmm. Value proposition. Okay. I remember cross-testing when I worked at Bon Appetit and just weighing out everything that I was chopping. Are you making sure that the weights were accurate in addition to the, I don't know what to call it, the manual? Yeah, the metric. Metric? Thank you. Exactly. That's not something that I think most home cooks do, but I think it gives better appreciation into a recipe. When you see all those components, you know that that extra level of care has been gone to if somebody is providing both the tablespoon, teaspoon and the weights for it.
18:44Yeah, it's just that much more technical, you know. From February 20th to March 7th, dive into Canada's biggest culinary festival, Montreal en Lumière, an exclusive partnership with the McCord Stewart Museum and its exhibition, On the Menu Montreal, a restaurant story. The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restauranteurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist. Prepare your palate. World-renowned chefs, including several Michelin-starred talents, will team up with over 80 of Montreal's finest local chefs to create unforgettable, one-of-a-kind menus.
19:29The full program is available at MontrealOnLumiere.com, presented by Lotto Quebec in collaboration with National Bank. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible.
20:06That's the This Is Today's listener survey link in our show notes. So I want to talk about the photo shoot process for this book also because it's so gorgeous. Thank you. Also, my friend Pearl food styled it. You tried some of this stuff, right? I did try some of this stuff. She brought me all of the leftovers. But I'm curious what it was like for you to kind of embark on the visual side of the book because it's such a visual book. Yeah, I think similarly through the editorial experience, I really paid attention to what setting up a shoot was like. The reference notes, the styling notes, all of that, and applied the same kind of format to my own book.
20:43I had styling notes, reference photos for every single recipe, prop stylist notes. Everything was very laid out in that way. There was a deck slide for every single recipe with inspo photos and all of that. And when it came to choosing the team, I think also from the editorial experience, I knew exactly who I wanted to use. Pearl, I had like so many fantastic experiences with Pearl, like in the test kitchen. Her energy while she was cooking, which like cooking for a photo is so stressful, especially at BA where they're like packing in a few recipes in a day and you have like maybe an hour to get the photo done, you know.
21:25And they're all like different kinds of recipes. Exactly. And there's like different levels of prep required and stuff. And the way she like was balancing chatting with us and getting the work done and then also producing like a gorgeous dish at the end. I was like, this is the this is the vibe I want on set. And this is like what I want the photo to look like at the end, too. Anytime Pearl Food Style, it's one of my recipes like the photo was fantastic. All of my favorite food photos for my recipes for my time at BA were done by Pearl. Wow. I mean, we're just Pearl fans. I did an episode with her on the Taste podcast, which I'll link to in the show notes in case anyone is wondering who this person is.
22:02I will listen to it. Yeah. Pearl's an artist. And then where did you shoot the book? We shot it at my apartment at Rhythm Zero in Greenpoint for like a few of the photos and then at my parents' house in New Jersey. Yeah, I really did love the portraits of like you sitting at the table with your mom. Oh, yeah. All of those kind of textures and details that come together. Yeah. We actually talked about not making the book feel too thematic because I feel like sometimes you'll flip through a cookbook and the aesthetic is so strong that it starts to feel like repetitive. Yeah. You know what I mean?
22:38Where like the style is so distinct that it's repetitive. And I really wanted that when somebody flipped through this book that your interest would be remained, that no two photos would really feel the same unless they were like served together. And I think that was something that the team was a little apprehensive of at first. And then the prop stylist was like, no, yeah, I think that's a good idea. And and like the whole book kind of has it has a distinct aesthetic and energy for sure, but it's very varied between the recipes. And I think that makes slipping through it really interesting and hopefully makes people excited to cook each dish and not just like the first one they find, you know.
23:15Yeah, I think another thing that struck me as being varied in the book is these sample menus that you have throughout it, like for different occasions, like for a dinner party or a night in. And some of these menus, I'm like, damn, Zainab is cooking like 10 things for dinner. Honestly, it's more to provide options. I would probably pick three of those and go from there. But the intention is more that if you wanted to do the most, you could. And if you didn't, you don't have to. But like any relevant information, I'm providing it. Yeah. Was it fun to sit down and think about like what are all of the occasions in which someone would be cooking from this book?
23:48Yeah, 100 percent. And I love to see it like there were actually more and we had to cut them for space. But I'd love to see how many were applicable. You know what I mean? And like which ones kind of felt flat. Like I think game day was one that I didn't have like enough to make it make sense. But that makes sense considering I don't really watch sports and I'm not really like hosting. I was going to say, have you ever hosted a game day? I posted the Super Bowl a few years ago and I made the tandoori buffalo wings that are in the cookbook. I mean, that alone sounds really good. And I could see how maybe, I don't know if this is your editor's suggestion, but as an editor, if I saw tandoori buffalo wings, I would say, oh, you should make a game day menu around this because it's such a classic pairing.
24:28But I mean, if it doesn't feel right, there's other uses for it. Yeah. I mean, it's in the cookbook and you can make it on game day, but you can also just make it because you feel like eating it, which is what I do. I was wondering if I could ask you to make like a sample menu for me, actually, because it's springtime. It's like a very beautiful spring day today. And I think we're getting into that season. And if I was going to have a couple of friends over for dinner, are there any recipes in the book that you would suggest for this time of year? Okay. I'm putting you on the spot. Yeah, for sure.
24:59I think right now I would tell you to make the grape and fennel salad that has like a mustardy dressing. And I would tell you to swap the grapes for citrus since it's like get that last bit of citrus in for the season. And then for the main, I would tell you, are you in the mood for something like light and fresh or something a little bit more hearty? Maybe light and fresh. Okay. there's a really great seared salmon with a Thai inspired cucumber salad and the dressing is just so nice to spoon over rice too so maybe that and then for dessert if you get like your hands on a carton of Harry's berries it's a it's a weird recipe for me but it's also very nostalgic it's called strawberry delight and it's basically got like a cream cheesy mousse with Ritz crackers and like macerated strawberries.
25:53It's very simple. It's kind of like trifle-esque minus the cake, but it's very good. It sounds very retro. It is. Where did that idea come from? My mom. That makes sense. Yeah. Don't tell her I said that. She came up with the name too. It sounds very contemporary and fresh. I love that idea. And while we're talking about recipes, I think I'm always curious about like the recipes that take the most time that, you know, obviously come together in the end, But I'm curious if there is a recipe in the book that you felt, you know, you had to really work on to make it perfect. It was probably one of the baked goods.
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26:28I feel like those, because I don't have a pastry background, always take the longest to come together. I want to say the brown butter salted pecan shortbread just because I had such a specific idea of like the Walker's style Scottish shortbread. And to get that texture right was was harder than I was expecting. Yeah, I'm always curious with people who are developing all kinds of recipes, but maybe like don't have a pastry background. Like in your own life, if you're having people over for dinner, are you making the dessert or is it something that you sometimes would do store bought or like pass on to someone else?
27:02I think because now I have a pretty good recipe library, I will make it myself. Yeah. Yeah. I love baking. I really do enjoy it. It feels like something that that still feels like a hobby to me. whereas like cooking I feel like I can cook professionally baking definitely does feel like something I'm still actively learning and I want to like I just feel like I'll never know enough yeah I think for me um because it's not something I'm comfortable doing it feels so much more high risk also because it's not really like if I'm cooking and something doesn't taste right I can troubleshoot it and fix it but when something goes in the oven you kind of just have to hope that it turns out exactly yeah and that's why with this with the strawberry delight wreck it's not one of those you know what i mean you can taste as you go the whole thing's cold you keep it in the fridge it's very like make-ahead friendly okay i'm very into that yeah i like have a secret which is that i'm anti harry's berries it's not the point of this podcast i mean i really respect the labor and the quality of the strawberry i just don't believe that we live in a society where we deserve year-round access to strawberries on the east coast i agree and i'm from la and i'm used to having strawberries all of the time.
28:12Are they available year round? Basically, yeah. No way. They grow them like I think all year round. My mom always sends me photos at the farmer's market in LA of all of her beautiful produce to make me, you know, want to move back home. Yeah. For me, I would rather wait until we have them here and then they taste that much sweeter because it's like this special fleeting thing. Yeah. A hundred percent. I would agree. OK, let me give you another one then. No, I can wait because it'll be in like May. will get the strawberries and I'll make that dessert and I'll send you the photo and it'll get really worth it.
28:43Perfect. I can't wait. Okay. I want to play like a rapid fire taste chat game with you to close. So I'm going to ask you questions and make you play favorites. Okay. Your favorite cookbook right now that isn't your own? Bethlehem by Fatty Catan. Your favorite neighborhood restaurant in New York? I don't know if this counts, but Roberta's. That's not your neighborhood. I know it's the neighborhood adjacent, but it used to be my neighborhood, so I have strong nostalgic ties to it. Did you have a go-to order there? Yes, I get the famous original with honey. Well done. Well done, like charred crust?
29:17Yes. I didn't know you could order a pizza well done. I didn't either. It's something that my husband started doing, and I was like, oh, okay, I'm going to do that too. Pro tip. Yeah. Your favorite, like, occasion restaurant in New York? Moneta Tavern or The Grill. Your go-to late night snack? Cape Cod chips and Red Hot. Cape Cod chips, those are the salt and vinegar ones? No, they're just like the kettle cooked potato chips with Red Hot. And it kind of gives that like salt and vinegar flavor, but saucier. Oh, okay. That's really good. Three things that are always in your fridge or pantry. Preserved lemon, soy sauce, and French butter.
29:58Nice. The big three. finally a fictional food scene like from a book or a movie that you wish you could magically eat in real life i think i mentioned this in the cookbook too but the chocolate cake scene from matilda yeah yeah you would eat the whole cake if you give me enough time yeah yeah i could do it i believe you um and thank you so much for coming on the show thank you for having me this was great
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31:53Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox. As a food writer, I can be a little skeptical about subscription cooking boxes you hear about on podcasts. There's big talk about cooking simplicity, but you're usually left with disappointment after smashing that promo code. Now, Clayton, have you ever tried one of those subscription boxes? Yeah, Matt, my friend gave me a code for that one that has all the chopped vegetables in little baggies. I felt like a drug dealer trying to cook dinner. Yeah, man, I have so been there.
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33:03For nearly a decade, ButcherBox has led the industry with meat and seafood that's antibiotic-free. As an exclusive offer, our listeners can get free protein in every box for a year, plus$20 off your first box when you go to butcherbox.com slash taste. Visit butcherbox.com slash taste to get this limited time offer and free shipping always. That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. Holly Brickley, welcome. This is Taste. It's so great to meet you. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. This is thrilling for me. I love your novel, Deep Guts.
33:42I read it in a couple days. It's out now. We'll talk about the Hollywood connection. we often cast novels in real time while we're reading them and wait years or never for real casting but you literally just have a movie deal for this book and it's amazing and we'll get to that but I want to first ask you this is a little different we're not going to dwell on food there will be some food elements but on our show we talk a lot about fiction because we love it so much but you know when you're back in New York you lived here for your graduate school and you spent a lot of time in New York where do you like to go out?
34:17Well, I lived in New York when I was very broke. I was a student. So for me, my nostalgic New York thing is cold sesame noodles from a Chinese place, which don't exist on the West Coast. That's not a thing. Very rarely you can find them and they don't taste right. They don't have the right kind of chewy texture. So, yeah, that's always my first thing. It's like just find some random Chinese place and get the cold sesame. The cold sesame. So you live in Portland in such a great food city. I know. But you're just not getting the sesame noodles there. No, no. San Francisco, you can't find them. Yeah.
34:51It's not the same. Is there one restaurant in Portland that's just deep, close connection to you? There are so many good restaurants in Portland. I love Jacqueline. Have you ever been there? No, I haven't been there. Tell me about it. Delicious seafood. Yeah. It just moved to a place that has like engineered wood and like kind of a more modern vibe. I have a thing about - Engineered wood, not a positive selling point. I have a thing about real wood. Yeah, yeah. I swear, I feel like it distastes my food to just be surrounded by fake wood and veneer. And the acoustics of the place change. The vibe changes.
35:33Anyway, I like an old, creaky restaurant vibe. And he's got bones in it. And he's got bones in it. I feel like there's lived in, not the pressed polyurethane wood. Exactly. Yeah, I get that. But Jacqueline is still an amazing movie. They remodeled with the bad wood, but the restaurant is still amazing. All right, cool. So you can forgive them for their design techniques. Great. All right, well, let's talk about Deep Cuts. I love the book. I want to keep it spoiler-free, obviously, because you need to read this book. But I'd love for you to set up Percy, the narrator, the protagonist. She has a deep relationship to music.
36:11She listens to music. She's a songwriter but not a musician. She writes about music. And just tell us a little bit about your protagonist. So, yeah, she has lots of opinions about music. Oh, yeah, of course. No real talent for it, which I know is a lot of people, probably you and I both know. 100%. You and I maybe are? Yeah. Percy is definitely like born from my rib. And she also uses music to make sense of her life. She listens very closely to lyrics and melody and is always analyzing songs. So because it's first person narration, there's there's a love story in the book between her and the musician Joe.
36:56But the love that Percy has with music sort of becomes the the other love story of the book. And, you know, Percy's life evolves in the book. And what I really like about the book is that you start in Berkeley, on the campus of UC Berkeley, in the year 2000. And it spans many years. And you see Percy change and her musical tastes possibly change. When you're writing this novel and you're looking at this time frame of like 2000 to 2015 or so, or even in the modern time, no spoilers. You know, how do you think about how music and rock music changed?
37:43I wanted to focus on the songs I loved. That's all I wanted to do. So I wasn't really thinking about that while writing the book. I was thinking about and a lot of the songs are like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and older songs. Nina Simone's cover of Just Like a Woman is a big one. So it wasn't really about like the aughts specifically that in terms of music and how the music might be different. But the technology of the time ended up being really big in a way that I didn't set out to explore that. But the way that everything felt different, just writing a scene set in 2000, the way that people were looking each other in the eye, the way that.
38:35No phones. No phones was such a big thing. And then we got iPods, which I believe to be the most glorious moment in modern technology when you could have thousands of songs on a device in your pocket, but your boss couldn't email you on it. I just wish we would have stopped there. Honestly, it was the best moment. And it was so exciting. I felt like things were happening that were exciting all the time. There was the music blogging era. There was MySpace, which was like this like Wild West playground. The technology was changing and giving us new things, but it wasn't pulling our attention away from each other.
39:15We hadn't yet become our data. Yeah, exactly. Well said, Holly. I really appreciate that having graduated college in 02 and written about music at the turn of the century like that and really thinking about this era when music really affected us in a way that is different now. And there really isn't a monoculture now, right? Music is so spread out and genre wise. We'll get into a few of the artists that I want to hear. I want to hear your Chapel Rowan take. That'll be for later. But like back then in 2000, take our listeners back, like there were like massive bands and then there were like middle bands.
39:51But like everyone was talking about the shins. Yeah. Everyone in our world. OK, maybe that's it. But it's true because Pitchfork was so huge. Sure. It just as soon as Pitchfork anointed something and it was good, like it was good at picking those bands, I think, for us. So, yeah, everyone would just get on the get on the shins train and we'd all have things to talk about. Interpol. It was all I do. It was it was like a mini monoculture. Great way to say it because there was obviously pop music. Right. But then the indie rock of the 2000, 2010, I think Lizzie Goodman's book or history of that era is terrific assessment of how music was so different then.
40:39It's great now, though. I'm not going to be one of those older guys who says, you know, music isn't good now. Are you? Are you going to? I just got old in the sense that I pay less attention to it. Yep, yep, yep. I'm busier. Um, uh, but yeah, I still, I love Chapel Ron. Cool. Let's talk about the deep cut and it's the title of your book. It's a terrific title. Uh, and you know, Percy is of the deep cut. And I think in the narration and in this, the, the, the songs that you cite, there are many, uh, deep cuts, uh, songs that maybe, um, aren't as well known, but I want to hear about your definition of what makes a great deep cut.
41:18Yeah, because Percy has some deep cuts, but then she also has like Hey Ya by Outkast. Yeah. So Percy has this thing about how deep cuts are. Well, just in case anybody doesn't know, a deep cut is like an obscure song. Not that not the obvious single from the album, but maybe an outtake or a B-side or just an album cut that didn't get much play. uh percy kind of resents the attention that deep cuts get from the sort of college music snob world yeah uh and because it's a thing you know there's always some dude usually a dude saying uh that you know this song was better their first album was better and i it has always annoyed me because usually there's a reason like there's a reason like i don't know don't dream it's over by crowded House is like the Crowded House song that we all know because it's a fucking masterpiece, you know?
42:18Like, to fall over each other trying to say that, like, some random track from a Crowded House album is better than that song is just stupid. So anyway, Percy has a thing that she wishes deep cuts could mean something totally different, something that has nothing to do with anyone else's opinion. And it's just how deep does it cut? How close to the bone? How long do you feel it? So that's what I like to think of. Beautiful. Of it as. Well, so well said. And yeah, I think there was an era maybe still today is like, it's kind of like flexing your music knowledge by picking that seventh track and being like, this is the guy, this is the one.
42:59Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about The Shins though? Can we just go there? Oh my God, I love The Shins. Well, your book really, I love them too, but I had not listened to The Shins' O Inverted World 2001 album top to bottom in probably a decade, which is my mistake. I love James Mercer and I love his other projects too. He's such a great songwriter. But you reminded me about Weird Divide and Percy has a connection to the song. And I love that song. And tell me your take and your opinion of O Inverted World. And listener, if you haven't listened to that album, you got to do it. Yeah, it was just so magical.
43:39It was so it was like this new version of pop to me that was taking elements of the Beach Boys, but translating it for that indie modern moment, which was sort of like things were happening with Elephant Six and other movements where melody was becoming really important again, which it wasn't for much of the 90s. But then the Shins did it in a way that was a little bit more polished than a lot of the— Like Apples and Sereo of Montreal, like really big melody bands, but really not musically as strong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Shins were a more sophisticated version of it, I think. Well said. And it's true.
44:33And, you know, you see a band like Vampire Weekend come decade later, coming from the conservatory background and really having the musical chops and I feel the Shins crawled so Vampire Weekend. Yeah. You know, anyways. I love that band. Me too. And really, Deep Cuts, for anyone who was listening to music closely for 2000 to 2010, damn, there's so many great memories there. Must have been fun. Are you listening to music constantly while you're writing the book? Yeah, I was. I was really sort of monstrously listening to music because I was always looking for the song that that chapter would turn on.
45:15So every chapter is titled with the name of a song. A few of them are fictional songs that the characters write, but most of them are songs that we're discussing today. So, yeah, I was always looking for them. And, you know, it's so hard now. You can't root through your CD rack or your CD wallet or spin through your iPod. So I was just kind of like shouting at Alexa, like, next, next, next. Oh, my gosh. That's so grim when you say that way. Yeah. I look back at my iTunes sometimes and I have got the physical still. Luckily, it hasn't gone away. Spotify is wonderful in music discovery. I'm a big Spotify fan, but there's nothing like having a real collection.
45:58Yeah, I miss it. We do have a record collection. I could look through that, but it's only so big, you know. So Holly, let's actually talk about pop music of the modern era. I, you know, from Doja Cat to The Dare to Charlie XCX to Post Malone to Chapel Rowan. I just named a bunch. It was like word salad there. Are you like in like when you watch the Grammys? I'm not even sure if you even do that. What do you what do you think about this modern pop landscape? Yeah, some of it is just like Greek to me, honestly. And that's embarrassing to me. But it is what it is. I love Chapel Rhone. I love Olivia Rodrigo.
46:40Charlie XCX is not giving me that feeling I just described with the deep cut. You know, like it's just not it's and maybe it would if I were younger, you know, so I don't begrudge any of it. It's just like not not speaking to me. Yeah. And I think you're right. Like it's definitely maybe for younger generation. It's also the vibes. Yeah. Air quotes. I mean, it seems like music right now is about setting the vibe as much as is about lyricism. And I think Percy and by extension, you really care about lyrics. I do. You're a lyrics person. I do. And speaking of that, you know, an artist that I feel does it all and somebody who I believe, in my opinion, is is not as popular as she should be as Fiona Apple.
47:25And I think you have a beautiful section in the novel about Fiona Apple. And I just want to take this opportunity to ask you about Fiona Apple and what Fiona Apple means to you. Yeah. Well, she had that moment in the pandemic, right, with the Fetch the Bolt Cutters album, which was. Yes, she did. You're right. Yeah, it was big. And it was almost one of those monoculture moments for me where I felt like we were all listening to that. And it was so, so special. I loved that album so much. To me, that and her first album are her best albums. Yeah. Fiona is 100 percent just committed. She's like always herself.
48:07She's always doing what she feels to be true. She's not interested. She's not dialing anything back or afraid of being maudlin. That's the I think her real superpower. Yeah. And like musically, too. Yeah. You know, playing, I would say, in a style, especially in the earlier albums, you know, this piano driven, emotive pop music that really strips things down. But then with that vocal talent and that iconic vocal power, it's such a it really makes you get emotional listening to her music. It's very Tory. The way you just described that sounds like Tory Amos, too. Yeah, yeah. Both of them using the piano, like, percussively and, yeah, not being afraid to be just insanely emotional with their vocal talent.
49:00Yeah. You're reminding me of a pandemic moment because I totally blocked that out because, yes, the pandemic. But, right? You're thinking about, like, wow, that was really big in 22, you know? Yeah. But I'm happy to be reminded that actually maybe younger generation listens to Fiona Apple. I hope so. I hope so. Oh, she has such good messages for them. There's a line in that song, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. She's remembering, you know, kids being mean to her when she was younger. And she says, I'm ashamed of what I've done, what I let get done. They stole my fun. They stole my fun. I think that's just the most powerful.
49:37I'm getting goosebumps right now thinking about it. And just those moments when you look back on your life and you remember like worrying about what other people thought, like stole your fun. Yeah. And fun is what you should be experiencing as a young person. Totally. I want to talk about the music blog era. And I had blogs and I wrote about music before food and I just have a deep connection myself to this era. And I think your character, Percy, taps into this a bit in the novel. You know, Prissy has a blog and it's, you know, it has a following. And take us back to that era when the music blog, you know, published on WordPress or Blogger actually was like the most important journalism being done in music.
50:24You know, Rolling Stone, they were recruiting people who ran bloggers to write in the pages of Rolling Stone and Spin and et cetera. I mean, Spin's staff was filled with bloggers. It's amazing. I feel like I want you to take me back. I feel like you know more about it than I do. I'm just reading the text and I'm like, you clearly were tapped into this Malouk in a way that I'm like, I feel seen. Yeah. But I was sort of just a consumer of it, you know. And I found it very useful as a writer because it was getting us all on the same page, like we talked about a little bit, like that mini monoculture.
51:05But it was so democratic. It was kind of coming from our peers. And you could find the person that you – you could find the people who had your taste. So one I remember following religiously was some guy named Fluxblog. and he wasn't one of the really big ones. Oh, I followed that. It was great. Yeah, he was great, right? 100%. He and I had the same taste. You know, he liked Steely Dan and New Pornographers and like nobody else likes Steely Dan or still doesn't. You know, I don't know. Stop it. This show is pro Steely Dan. Is it? Oh my, I've seen Steely Dan three times. Me too. I never saw Walter Becker though, so.
51:42Oh, really? I missed the Becker era. Oh, that's too bad. I've seen Steely Dan probably 10 times. Embarrassing. Okay, so let's just take an aside. We'll get back to the bloggers. Top three albums, please. Of Steely Dan? Yeah, we're just going there. Number one, Asia. Please, thank you.
52:01Katie Lide and Gaucho. Yeah, Gaucho, Time Outta Mind, top three songs for Steely Dan of Gaucho. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. We can go all day. People love Steely Dan, actually, the younger generation. Really? I think so. I saw them at an outdoor festival, and it was young people were there, which is rad. Oh, that's so cool. Back to bloggers, though, I feel like you're right. You know, folks like, you know, Ultra Girl, the modern age and the modern age. Laura, she's a food she has a food blog now out in Denver. And it's it's it's like a terrific. She's an amazing food writer, too. It feels like you're right.
52:36Like there was a but they had power. Yeah. Right. And you I think Percy sees that like there's like actual power when, you know, I think blogging is not really. I mean, Instagram is power now, I guess a little bit more. Which isn't as in-depth and I don't know. It doesn't feel the same to me. Well, yeah. I mean, it's stripped away words. Yeah. And words are important. I'm glad we could go back to that. All right. A little bit of we're going back into the food zone right now. And Berkeley 2000, as a student there, this is like one of America's most important food cities currently, historically.
53:18But what's food like in the year 2000 in Berkeley? Oh, my God. Like Top Dog, La Burrita,$2 pizza slices from Blondies and Fat Slice. It was not on anybody's mind. It was like, oh, I haven't had any food all day. All I've had is like coffee and beer. I guess I should eat something. That was food. And like everyone, all the girls anyway, were vegetarians, like all of us. so there were lots of like veggie burgers and the vegan dogs from top dog it was not food actually in the book i used as sort of a a signifier of maturity for percy she at one point dates an an older guy a slightly older guy uh who's a cook and is like cooking her real meals and like has like dimmer attachments on his lights and and it's she's she's very like oh this this feels good and it's sort of intoxicating for her but she's also not there yet yeah um so i i wasn't even close when we were at berkeley i don't know i wasn't thinking about food at all yeah i love i love how food does play a role throughout the the novel i think that you have some some pretty cool restaurant scenes too and bar scenes as well yeah yeah i like i like that you show this kind of lack of interest in food.
54:44But still, there's like some moments where food pops up. Yeah, yeah. All right. So the big news I teased at the top, you know, again, we often cast books in real time. And many times that casting is only fictional. But you are not the case. Deep Cuts has been optioned. A24, heard of them. They're going to be doing the adaptation. And Saoirse Ronan and Austin Butler are starring. And it's by the director, Sean Durkin, who did Iron Claw, which I think we talked about the end of the year two years ago as one of it was a terrific film that kind of got overlooked a little bit about, you know, this wrestling family in Texas.
55:24And what the fuck? I know. Damn. That's like pretty cool. It's yeah. Somebody said online, I can't believe how perfect every piece of this news is. I think that was the best comment. It's just like, yeah, like, how did I get so lucky that every piece is this amazing? I don't know. I don't know, man. I think it happened. So we sent it out to the Hollywood people at the same time that we sent it out to publishing companies. So that was happening simultaneously quite a while ago. And Saoirse read it really early on and really loved it. Pause. Like, that's crazy. How does that happen? I know agencies do the agency thing.
56:04But, like, I mean, it's a terrific novel. So obviously you should people are picking it up. But like, is she like a music fan? Yeah. Yeah. She she I actually had the opportunity to Zoom with her early on, which was really cool. And she just was like, I'm Percy. I am Percy. She loves Beach House and loves Fleetwood Mac and had a lot of really cool things to say about them. And, yeah, I think she and she identified, I think, with the kind of opinionated nature of Percy. Yeah. And, yeah, so once once she was on board, I think that's what allowed the other pieces to fall into place. Yeah. She brings a certain level of quality with her, you know.
56:48Did you have actors in mind when you were writing the novel? No. God, no. and I remember very early on when my agent asked that if I've thought about a screen adaptation and did I want to write it and everything I was like oh no this book wouldn't work for a movie it's not it's got those writing pieces in it the little pieces of music journalism so that wouldn't translate and no this isn't and she was like I think you're wrong yeah I mean I think a good VO scene in the words of a great actor is perfect and it gets like the voice of your voice into the film. There's all sorts of things they can do.
57:27I just wasn't, I don't, I'm a writer. I wrote a book and that's what I do. You're not writing the screenplay? No, Sean is. Sean Durkin is. He's a writer, director. That's what he does. He doesn't make films that he doesn't write. So, and I want to write my next book. You know, I just got my dream job. So I'm going to keep doing this. Of course. And that's so terrific to hear that, you know, there wasn't that like idea that you have to like match a screenwriter to your sensibilities. It's like this director who has a vision and works with novels or just writes movies he wants to make. Oh, my gosh.
58:03So, I mean, give us the details of the film that you can talk about right now. Like when when do you suspect it will start shooting? And and what's what's the what's a good word about when it might come out? I don't know. I am an executive producer, but I am not. Oh, that's the agency's doing their job? I think that's all that is. But I've heard that they're going to start shooting at the end of this year. Okay. And you'll be on set, I would imagine. Yeah, they said I could stop by. Oh, you've got to more than stop by. This is your work. I'm kidding. I hope people who are excited about the film, I will say this.
58:44I hope people are excited about the film. Go out and buy the book. Absolutely. And it's a great sentiment because the book is out now. And really, there's a reason these folks are making this book into a movie. You know, there's a lot of terrific books out there. And most don't get made into movies, especially with A24. Congratulations. Thanks, Matt. Very, very cool. I love how the Knife's amazing 2003 album, Deep Cuts, you know, comes back a little bit. I like it over Silent Shout, personally. I was listening to both side-by-side last night, and I was like, I think I like Deep Cuts the best. But I want to talk about The Knife, because I think that's a band that I know there's been, like, you know, Fever Ray and some, like, you know, offshoots of that duo, this brother-sister duo.
59:30But you really, like, have a great moment with The Knife in the book. Yeah. In the book, they say that it's the perfect name for that band because it sounds like the aural equivalent of a meat cleaver. Yeah. They were just so sharp and so just the way it was arranged, the sound of the drums, there's something very innovative about it. And it still sounds fresh. Like, that's crazy when music can sound so fresh and arresting and never dated in any way. And for me, it's about a few songs. Some of the tracks on that album are a little experimental for me. Yes, definitely. Which is just, that's just who I am.
1:00:14That's my taste. But yeah, Pass It On and Heartbeats were just so, they're just iconic. Yeah. There's a magic there. Yeah. Yeah. Aggressive in some ways too. Yes, totally. But you would hear it out, you know, played in clubs or, you know, when there were like rock DJs. Yeah. And that was a thing. It's probably a thing too. I just, I don't hang there anymore. But Holly, tell me about, you know, what's next, because I feel you've got some some plans, you know, is there a new is there a new work in the works? Yeah, I'm writing another book. I'm about maybe halfway through it ish. Yeah. Also a love story.
1:00:55Also about a super opinionated, kind of slightly obnoxious woman. So that might be my thing, but not music related. And not a continuation of the narrative. No, no. Fresh story, fresh story. Yeah. I love it. Have you thought about writing about food in a more like in a deeper way in your novels? No. Yeah. Sorry. No, no. There's no sorry. I think you got to know your strengths and what you're interested in. I come from a line of food obsessed people. And I am, I don't know. It's not really my thing. Certainly not for writing. There's so many people who do that really well. Yeah. Word. I mean, you do music really well.
1:01:34on what when you're writing this new work I mean now that you've got this first one out is it is it easier uh it's a very good question yeah in a sense I mean it's easier because now I know that it will be read yeah which is something that kind of keeps me going a bit more whereas this deep cuts I really thought like 20 of my friends were going to read that book and they were going to love it and that was kind of enough for me. But that made it hard sometimes to find the time. So yeah, there's that. But then there's also like a little bit more pressure, a little bit more expectation. So it's different.
1:02:16I love it. I cannot wait to read it. I hope to read it as soon as it's published. Oh, thanks, Matt. It's amazing. Well, on This Is Taste, we ask guests about the discerning taste. So to close this interview, here's a little rapid fire, fast and furious taste check. Holly, are you ready? I guess so, yeah. Okay. The best fruit? Mango. Strawberry. Mango. Sounds like a Snapple flavor. No, just mango. Just mango. Okay. What makes a great mango for you? Oh, ripeness. Perfect. I love it. The worst vegetable? bok choy. Yeah. Can be challenging. Yeah. Slimy on half of it and then like not adequately crunchy on the other half.
1:02:55Got to put it in a wok. Yeah. Maybe. Do it fast. No, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to like poke holes in your arguments here. I'm a passive dessert here. Okay. Do you have a typical breakfast? A oatmeal or granola or cottage cheese with blueberries. I don't know. Into it. Into it. Sounds like a good breakfast. What's the best dessert? Ice cream. What flavor? My mom makes ice cream from her, with fruit from her garden, like her strawberries. Yeah. That are just like real strawberry, like the best, ripest strawberries. And then she makes her own ice cream. Is your family still in Canada? No.
1:03:37My parents are originally from British Columbia. They moved to Canada in 1970 and stayed there for 35 years and now are back in San Francisco. But they have a little garden back there that they mostly live from. Oh, beautiful. Yeah. Sounds like a nice life. Yeah. Is there a restaurant you wish you could bring back from the dead? It's like the whole of San Francisco for me. I'm going to say Tiku's, which was a really cool, authentic buckwheat crepe place in the mission. Yeah. Everyone loved. Lots of old wood, you know. Old wood. Had the aesthetic that you liked. Yeah. And you craved. No more of this artificial wood.
1:04:22We don't need these floors where they have like this whitewashed. Yes. industrial feeling. Because it's all the same. It's all the same. That's the problem. It looks like a pattern that someone made on a computer. And it's too hard. It feels wrong under your feet. Yeah. The edges of the table are too sharp. And yeah, it's just, it's not good. Even worse than a restaurant with fake wood is a record store. Oh, yes. But a record store has, now I will like, I'm all about the carpet of a record store. Like old carpet, that's rad. But like, anything that's like sterile in a record store. Yeah, no. Rough.
1:04:58All right, a few more. When you're craving fast food, where are you going? In-N-Out. Oh, yeah, your West Coast. Yeah. Do they have those in Portland? We have one an hour away. Yeah. Near a kid-friendly amusement park that my kids love to go to. So it's like, all right, Enchanted Forest and In-N-Out. Oh, wonderful, wonderful trip. What's your favorite city outside America to visit for food? Paris? Yeah. Good answer. went there for my honeymoon very nice very nice last one your favorite sandwich uh the turkey sandwich after thanksgiving yeah fresh turkey and the cranberry sauce my family makes cranberry relish cranberry orange relish in a meat grinder it's really fresh wow oh they're they're going they're like deep cuts with the recipe oh yeah yeah yeah i like that well it's been such a pleasure talking to you holly thank you so much for joining this is taste thank you matt thanks Thanks for having me.
1:06:21And make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste.
From the publisher
Zaynab Issa is a cookbook author, recipe developer, and content creator based in Brooklyn, New York. Formerly a food editor at Bon Appétit, she contributes recipes to a variety of publications and just released a great debut cookbook, Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation. It’s so fun having Zaynab in the studio to talk about blending her East African and South Asian roots with Americana classics, building the perfect dinner party menu, and more.
Also on the show we have a really fun talk with Holly Brickley, author of the new novel Deep Cuts. We talk about the music scene in the early 2000s, and how the novel tackles a generation of musical vibe shifts. We also talk about the book’s exciting Hollywood future with A24.
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Read More:
Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation [Abrams]
Zaynab’s Substack [Substack]
Saoirse Ronan And Austin Butler To Star In Feature Adaptation of ‘Deep Cuts’ [Deadline]
New Denizen [official]
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