In short
Podcast Summary: This Is TASTE - Episode 611: From Bahrain to Ottolenghi to the World with Noor Murad
Episode Overview In this episode of "This Is TASTE," hosts Aliza Abarbanel and Matt Rodbard interview Noor Murad, a Bahrain-born, New York-trained, London-based chef and author of the cookbook *Lugma*. The conversation delves into Murad's culinary journey, her influences in the kitchen, and the intricacies of Bahraini cuisine, enriching the discussion with anecdotes and insights about food culture.
Key Guests
- Noor Murad: Chef and author of *Lugma*, previously involved in the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen.
- Brian Voll: Creative force behind the *Menus By Brian* cookbook series.
Main Topics Discussed
Noor Murad's Culinary Journey
- Background: Noor shares her experiences, from her early food memories in Bahrain to her training at the Culinary Institute of America in New York.
- Influences: She speaks about the diverse influences in Bahraini cuisine, including Arabic, Persian, and Indian flavors, and how they reflect in her cooking style.
Bahraini Cuisine
- Description: Noor describes Bahraini food as rustic and comforting, with a heavy emphasis on seafood, rice dishes, and spices.
- Key Ingredients: Discusses the importance of rice in Bahraini culture and its role in her cookbook.
- Dried Limes: Noor explains their significance in Bahraini cooking and their versatile use in various recipes.
- Date Syrup: Highlighted as a common sweetener in Bahraini cuisine, adding depth to both savory and sweet dishes.
*Lugma* Cookbook Insights
- Concept: Noor's approach to her book aims to showcase less-known Bahraini dishes, moving away from mainstream Middle Eastern foods like hummus.
- Recipe Development: She discusses her recipe testing process and the importance of maintaining the essence of traditional dishes while allowing for personal interpretation.
- Cultural Representation: Noor emphasizes the need for broader representation of Middle Eastern cuisines, sharing her personal narrative intertwined with her recipes.
Cooking Philosophy
- Recipe Intent: Noor aims to keep recipes approachable and emphasizes that cooking should be about comfort and love.
- Balancing Tradition and Innovation: She strives to honor traditional recipes while infusing her unique, modern sensibilities.
Brian Voll's *Menus By Brian*
- Introduction to the Series: Brian discusses the format of his cookbooks as serialized menus rather than traditional recipe collections.
- Cooking for a Crowd: He emphasizes the importance of creating balanced meals and minimizing food waste by using ingredients across multiple recipes.
Key Takeaways
- Culinary Heritage: The richness of Bahraini cuisine is often overlooked; *Lugma* aims to celebrate and share these unique flavors.
- Emphasis on Experience: Cooking is portrayed not just as a method of preparing food, but as a way to connect with one’s heritage and loved ones.
- Simplicity in Cooking: Both Noor and Brian advocate for straightforward cooking that encourages creativity and reduces waste.
- Culinary Storytelling: The narratives behind recipes add depth to the cooking experience, highlighting personal connections and cultural significance.
Conclusion This episode provides a delightful exploration of Bahraini cuisine through Noor Murad's expertise and personal stories, while also introducing Brian Voll's creative approach to cookbook writing. Through their discussions, listeners are encouraged to embrace culinary experimentation and the stories that food can tell.
---
Additional Notes
- Live Event Announcement: Tickets for a live event featuring Padma Lakshmi and others were mentioned.
- Feedback Request: Listeners were encouraged to leave reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com.
0:31and I always say that like Bahrain is a big mashup of Arabic Persian and Indian flavors so big grand rice dishes really herb heavy lots of sour flavors but it's also quite rustic like it's not it's not like a refined cuisine it's it's really rustic and comforting which is something that I really love about it. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel. Noor Murad is a Bahrain-born, New York-trained, and London-based chef, and the author of the wonderful new cookbook Lugma. You may know her recipes from her time running the Odalangitas Kitchen and contributing to the books Falistine, Shelf Love, and Extra Good Things.
1:14Now it's time to get to know Noor herself through this delicious collection of traditional and reimagined dishes from Bahrain and beyond. Noam Murad, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I know it's the end of the day for you in London and we're just getting going here in New York. So I'm curious if you've had anything good to eat today so far. So far, well, I've been testing a recipe for my sub stack, but it wasn't the way I had planned. I had envisioned it. So I need to start from scratch again. So, you know, it was fine. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of aubergines happening.
1:56A lot of aubergines recipes happening in my kitchen at the moment. I think that's very smart. And I think it's nice to hear that people are testing recipes for Substack and, you know, making sure that they work perfectly before putting it out into the world. Can you share what the what is like the final recipe? What do you want it to be? well I had wanted to do like a sweet and sour kind of aubergines with pomegranate molasses and like pine nuts and parsley like um but yeah I think I just it was just a bit muddled like I needed to get to a point where it's like more streamlined and like the flavors are more pronounced I'm probably just gonna strip it back um but I might just start over um as long as the aubergines shine, you know, because we're coming into summer soon.
2:43It's going to be aubergines everywhere and people love a good aubergine or eggplant if you're in New York. It's full UK immersion to hear aubergine. And I love speaking with you a little bit about your testing development process. I think that's a skill that you must have really honed, you know, in your culinary career and certainly at the Odalegi Test Kitchen. And I want to kind of dig into all of that. But I guess to start and give a little bit more context just about who you are and like the approach that you're bringing to food I'm wondering if you could share an early food memory with me an early food memory so one of my earliest food memories um is actually driving to this like hole in the wall place with my dad um and it was very like half hazard um kind of situation but it was just a man and a big pot uh where he would fry um samosas but we call them Sambusa and they would be stuffed with like spicy potatoes or spicy mung beans or cheese and you'd get like five for I don't know like a few pennies worth it was very very cheap and he'd stuff it like fry it fresh stuff it into a paper bag and you get it and like the grease kind of stains through the paper bag and I used to go with my dad we always used to have a potato one because my dad's a potato man and we'd eat it in the car and just like burn our mouths in the process and get grease stains all over our shirts.
4:09And that was one of my earliest food memories. I love that memory. I'm also a potato man. So I think that sounds really delicious. And I think it speaks to like one of the beautiful things about reading your book, Logoma, is like you're talking a lot about the food of Bahrain, which is a place that I've never been to before. And I haven't had a lot of opportunity to try the food. So I think the way that you're writing about it is so beautiful and descriptive. And I'm wondering for somebody listening who maybe also is a little unfamiliar, if you could just kind of say a little bit about, like, how would you describe Bahraini food?
4:42And like, maybe if there are any like cultural, geographic influences that you feel really kind of come across in the food that people are eating and enjoying. Yeah, absolutely. So for those that don't know too much about Bahrain, it's a tiny island in the Persian Gulf. It's really, really small. It's about 50 miles long from top to bottom. So very much small community, very big on seafood. But throughout history, it was an important seaport and center of trade. So a lot of cultures would pass through and leave their influences. So from Portuguese to cultures to Indian, Persian, Arabic. And I always say that Bahrain is a big mashup of Arabic, Persian, and Indian flavors.
5:28So big grand rice dishes, really herb heavy, lots of sour flavors, dried limes, slow cooked meats. Everything is very, very spiced. There's like kind of like masala spice mixes for everything. Very seafood heavy, but then there's like a huge street food scene, lots of grills, grilled meats on charcoal, samosas, and these kinds of things. So it's really, really big on on on flavor um but it's also quite rustic like it's not it's not like a refined cuisine it's it's really rustic and comforting which is something that I really love about it yeah I think it all sounds so delicious to me but I especially enjoyed noticing that you have a whole rice chapter in the book because rice is my preferred carb of choice uh oh good did you always like know you wanted to have a whole rice chapter yeah I always knew I was like if I ever write my own book it will have a rice chapter because for me rice is like the superior carb and I live in London and I know it's like a potato nation so I feel like I'm constantly fighting the battle of best carb but rice is such a it's like the main staple carb in Bahrain ironically it's not even native to the land we're a desert we don't like we don't have the land to be able to harvest rice but it was introduced to through trade and it was adopted and and now it's It's every like mealtime has to have a rice dish.
6:55Our national dish is a rice dish in Bahrain. And I just really, really wanted to give the rice a lot of love and do a whole chapter for it. Because I think people are very intimidated by cooking rice. And I kind of just want to show that you can dress it up and dress it down. There's so much you can do with it. So, yeah. Yeah, I was going to ask you to make the pitch for why rice is superior. But I think you kind of already hit that a little bit. I think one thing to me that's interesting is it's so easy like to serve like rice is complete on its own, but also it can really be kind of dressed up and like elaborated on and made really festive and celebratory.
7:33Yeah, absolutely. And it's just a really comforting thing to have. I love to run. So like rice is like a really great fuel for me. And yeah, it's just like any excuse to have rice, I will. Um, but yeah, I pretty much have rice, I'd say like five out of seven days of the week. Do you use a rice cooker? No, I don't. I like to cook rice in a pot, like with my, on my gas stove. Maybe I'm like called old fashioned that way, but like it takes for, I mean, nothing against rice cookers are really convenient, especially for like busy families and stuff. But like, there's something about the act of cooking rice, uh, that I find super therapeutic and I wouldn't want to take that away.
8:17Yeah, you are the rice cooker. Yeah, I am. I am the rice cooker. Something we were chatting about kind of briefly off mic is just how this book was an opportunity for you to be telling your own story. And you've had, you know, so much experience co-authoring books with the Odelingi Test Kitchen and recipes, etc. I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit to your kind of culinary background and kind of these collaborative environments that you've been in and how maybe that kind of set you up to have this opportunity to be telling your own story. and having your own book? Yeah, well, I'll try to keep it short.
8:54I guess I've been working in food since I was 16 and from Bahrain. And I had lots of different experiences, so working in catering, working in hotels, working in restaurants. I moved to New York. I studied at the Culinary Institute of America. I stayed for one year to work in New York City. I did my internship in Hawaii and it was just like all these different influences in my life but I moved back to Bahrain in my 20s and well you know I've always been an island girl so I always felt like I was gonna come back home but you know I struggled a bit in Bahrain with work opportunities and like I felt like I wasn't learning the way you would in like a big city with so many different influences and so many different people and when I moved to London I joined the Otselenghi and I was working as a sous chef at one of the delis and at this point I think I was in my late 20s I was a bit burnt out and I was kind of looking for a change and then the test kitchen job kind of landed in my lap someone told me there's an opportunity at the test kitchen and I said what's the test kitchen I didn't really know what it involved so much but I soon came to know that It was like this kind of like creative hub where you create recipes for different publications, whether that's online or on newspapers, Guardian, New York Times, or for the off-language books.
10:26And I've always been creative. I'd always put like new dishes on the menu. So it felt like, oh, this is maybe the right step for me. And that was like my first insight into the world of publishing. My first project was working on Falisteen with Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley. which was really, really amazing because I was the lead recipe developer for that. And I really kind of saw what it took to write a book because before then you get this really beautiful cookbook, but you don't really think about the process involved in that, right? Like you don't think, you think like, oh, this is a bunch of recipes collected, but like the recipes just brush the surface.
11:03It's also like you have to, you have to present a story. You have to kind of put it together you have a pitch you have a cover you have a design and um quality of paper there's so many things to think about and so many people involved in a book which really takes a whole village um and it really made me appreciate books so much more um and so eventually I went on to head the test kitchen and it was it was actually during lockdown that um you know But Asleggi said to me, oh, why don't we do the OTK, the Asleggi Test Kitchen Cookbooks? And that's kind of how I wrote those two books and made all the recipes and stuff for them.
11:43So it really gave me a lot of like practical practice into what it takes to write a book and recipe development process. So, yeah, that's kind of a long way of summarizing my career. I think that was great because I did the research and there is so many chapters. So I think you kind of summed it up so nicely. And, you know, I find that sometimes like when you know more about something, like maybe this is just me, but sometimes I'm less likely to do something if I know exactly how hard it's going to be. So I was curious, you know, after having so much experience, you know, working on all these other great books, like, did that make you more eager to do your own?
12:23Or like, how did you kind of come up with this motivation and idea to make Lugumma? Yeah, I think it definitely, I knew that I always had a story to tell. Like, I'd always, it'd been like a lifelong dream to write a cookbook. It's something I'd wanted since I was little. I was always obsessed with cookbooks. And I just didn't know when or how that would ever take shape. But I think when you write, when you're a co-author, especially if you're writing under such a big name like Otselenghi, it's hard to kind of feel complete ownership over the work. Yeah, it's quite a conflicting feeling because you know, OK, these are my recipes, this is my writing, but it doesn't truly feel yours.
13:04So I think at that point, I felt like, OK, it's my time now. It's kind of like spread my wings and do this on my own. because I knew that I could and I knew that I had benefited a lot from learning from the best on how to put a good cookbook together. Yeah, definitely. And I think the resulting book is so thoughtful. And I imagine you spent a lot of time thinking about the components and the chapters and the storytelling. I guess I'm curious how you went about thinking about how the book would be constituted. Did you know that you wanted to have certain chapters from the beginning? And did you kind of sit down and plan it out?
13:44Or did it kind of take shape along the way? Yeah, you know, originally, I had thought that Lugma would be an exploration into the different countries that influence Bahraini food. So that was kind of my initial thought. I was like, okay, I'll go to all these different countries. And I'll learn about like how it came to be that it landed in Bahrain. But then I realized that I went back to Bahrain after I left Otulenghi just for a few weeks, just kind of like a break. It was like a month that I was back home. And I kind of realized that like, actually the story is right here. It's where I grew up.
14:18It's the foods of Bahrain and also the foods of my childhood. And I felt like from living in London and living in the West for the first time in my late 20s, I kind of saw that there was a lack of representation on my part of the Middle East. You know, people often associate Middle Eastern foods with foods of the Levant, which are very, very delicious and amazing. But it's not the food that I grew up with. And the Middle East is such a diverse region. It's very rich in culture and history and language and people. But every single place and country you go to is a bit different and the food included.
15:00So I really felt like with Lukma, I was like, okay, how do I push this forward? and kind of show a different representation of a Middle East, of my Middle East. Yeah, you're very intentional. I think at the intro you say like this book doesn't have any hummus recipes. Not that you don't like hummus and not that it's never eaten in Bahrain, but just that you want to be shining a focus on other things. Yeah, and I think that, you know, I love hummus and it definitely does appear in Bahrain, but it's not Bahraini food. And I felt like it had enough representation. There's so many amazing, incredible chefs who have shared so many amazing recipes for things like hummus and falafel and shawarma and shakshuka, like all the hard hitters that people associate with Middle Eastern food.
15:44But for me, I was very intentional in not including them because I wanted to create space for different dishes like matjabous, Bahrain's national rice dish, or madrooba, like a beaten chicken and rice, because these recipes deserve a platform. And I wanted to show that how diverse the Middle East is in terms of the foods that it can offer. Yeah, I think that intention is really clear. And even in the beginning of the book, when you have a pantry section, you're kind of outlining some of your heavy hitter, like favorite ingredients that you think people should be like bringing in for the book. And one of them is like dried limes, which is something that I think is a kind of newer pantry ingredient for me to work with.
16:29And I'm wondering if you could maybe speak to what makes them so special. Yeah, so dried limes are basically limes that have been dried in the sun until they're completely hollow through the center. So they come in as a lighter, like brownish, greenish color, or they're completely blackened. The only difference between the two in terms of they're the same in terms of flavor profile, you can use them interchangeably. But the black limes have been heat treated, so they are that dark black color. um so in Bahrain we call it loomi aswed but it's also known as loomi imani noomi basra and dried limes are the backbone of cooking in Iraq Iran and the Gulf and I've always it never really I never really thought about black limes until I moved to the UK and I realized that it it was such a foreign ingredient here for for many people and um I started working at the offling Lenghi Test Kitchen and I was creating recipes with black limes and really kind of pushed this forward through the books of Lenghi flavor, Shelf Love.
17:35And I think it kind of popularized it definitely in London. You can get it more in like Middle Eastern Turkish supermarkets, even like a big supermarket chain. But I really wanted to like show like really, really, really showcase it in lukma because sometimes you'll get like a recipe with a black lime, you'll buy a bag of black limes and then you'll just never use it again. But with lukma, it's everywhere. It's in the rice dishes, it's in the stews, it's in marinades, it's in desserts because I really wanted to show its versatility and just how integral this one ingredient is to our cuisine. 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.
18:30The 2026 festival invites food lovers on a flavorful journey through time. Montreal's top restaurateurs 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. The 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.
19:13Do 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. That's the This Is Taste listener survey, link in our show notes. I think it's so interesting what you're saying about dried limes and how you've been able to kind of share them to a wider audience through like otolenghi and the popularity of all of those recipes.
19:49I'm curious if there are any other pantry ingredients in the book that you really want to be kind of highlighting and kind of raising up to a similar level of like a pantry ingredient that everyone should be having and cooking with. Another one is date syrup, which isn't really new. I don't think like you could find it in a lot of like health food stores, but um date syrup is used so much um in bahraini food so we'll use like date syrup to make us a type of rice called hammar uh because you know back then they didn't have sugar so they use dates to sweeten things and the rice is kind of sweetened it's made like pilaf style with saffron and cardamom and you have kind of like this sweet rice with very salty spiced fish so you get a bit of both together you know I even use it every day in my day-to-day on my porridge like date molasses and tahini on banana on my porridge in the book I put it in desserts as well like we have ligemat which are also I think in like Greek cuisine so it's basically fried dough that you then like toss in a sugar syrup but in Bahrain again when they didn't have sugar, they tossed it in date syrup, which is just the more natural, you know, sweet alternative that I love to use.
21:12And I think, yeah, it should definitely be added to everyone's pantries. It sounds like such a good breakfast. I'm going to have to duplicate it tomorrow. Yeah. Oh my God, you will. You'll be addicted. I'm sure. I was curious also how you felt about wanting to approach the balance of, you know, kind of preserving traditional recipes and sharing them in the book while also giving yourself room to, you know, honor your own British Bahraini upbringing and your own kind of updated takes on things? Did you kind of try to walk that line at all? Yeah, I definitely had a lot of conversations with myself when I was developing recipes for the book because, you know, I'm not a traditional chef.
21:53Like I don't usually cook traditional foods. I always kind of like to have a play with things because I am a child of two worlds. My mom is English. My dad is Arab. Even though I grew up in Bahrain, you know, I had a bit of both cultures in my upbringing. And that was very much reflected in my food. But when putting together lugma, I really felt there was a lot of room and necessity for some of the traditional dishes because it was introducing, you know, this island that not many people know enough about or maybe don't have the right impression of. um so I kind of felt like I would test the recipe if it was something traditional I would test it as it is and then if I want I felt like I wanted to play around or switch things up the main thing is that I kept the essence of the dish um and but then other times I've just completely done something completely untraditional it's just very new or very like a bit out there but I've always kind of kept the Middle Eastern flavors.
23:00So there's a really good mix of both types. And that is what Lugma is. And that's why I was very careful not saying Lugma, a taste of Bahrain or something, because it is a taste of Bahrain, but also it's not, it's me. And that's why I kind of kept it like abundant dishes from my Middle East, because it's my impression and my upbringing. And it's quite personal in that sense. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense when encountering the book. And I don't mean to put you on the spot too much, but I'm curious if there's a recipe or two in the book that you think really encapsulate this kind of like Nordic-specific point of view on like Bahreini food.
23:39I think, for example, the date molasses rice, Muhammad, that I included that recipe in the book. Traditionally, though, it's made with a fried rabbit fish and they make a spice mix. they cover this rabbit fish with the spice mix um and they fry it um like shallow fry the fish and you just have that and there's not there's no it's not glamorous but it's delicious um but then you know i also was like okay a you can't get rabbit fish in the west and i know that this book is going to be bought mostly by a western audience and people a lot of the time if there's a whole fried fish in a recipe they won't make it um so I kind of swapped it out for any kind of white fish so like hake or or halibut or whatever people prefer kind of give them the option like fillets that they can get from their local fishmonger or supermarket and pan fry that uh with the rice and then because I wanted to elevate the dish a bit more I made like a date pickle So really quick pickled dates with some red onion and spices.
24:50And that is a very untraditional, but also very traditional because we do use dates in so much of our food. So it was finding a way of keeping the flavors as they are, but also westernizing it slightly or just making it a bit more accessible for people and elevating it just a little bit with like this like sweet and sour pickle. yeah I love hearing about all of those components and I think the result is you know a really beautiful dish that you know they're all standouts but I think even like flipping through the book like the food photography is so gorgeous the styling is so gorgeous did you style the shoot yes I did I did style the shoot um which I remember when I told when the photographer Matt Matt Russell when he found out that I was going to be the stylist I mean his face was like uh because you know he didn't think that you know the the chef should be focusing on the food and that's it um but I I just assured him I was like look I've styled the OTK books um as well like we've never worked I've never worked with a stylist I just want to style my own food I don't want it to be overly propped um I want to I want to focus on the food in the play itself.
26:05And yeah, so we found our, we did a bit of a dance on the first day and then we kind of found our rhythm. So yeah, I kind of made sure to be both in the kitchen. I was very hands-on. I'm a very hands-on author. Yeah. I got that feeling and really like the, I can't think of a book with more delicious looking photos, like even like the egg dishes, which I don't, I don't like eating eggs at all, but I was looking at like these beautiful golden fried eggs and I I was like, maybe I should be eating these. Yeah, maybe they'll turn you, you know. I also like kind of dip in and out of eggs. Sometimes I get the egg ache, but I think that's just like working in food.
26:43Sometimes you can just overdo certain ingredients. And then you need to just step away from them and then revisit them. Yeah. Did you always know that you wanted to have this kind of like Bahraini location, photography, kind of slice of life shots as well in the book? yeah I did because you know I do feel like I feel like a lot of the travel and food books not not but a lot of them I feel can like over glamorize a region or a country and sometimes they're written from people from a western perspective who go and travel there and I really really wanted to show like a very real like imperfect but perfect for me Bahrain so I I didn't want anything like over glamorized.
27:30I didn't want to show any like modern buildings or skyscrapers or anything like that. I just really wanted to focus on like little local food spots, little farms, things like that. And just to give people like a little insight into the Bahrain that I remember. Because Bahrain has changed so much in the last 20, 30 years. It's really, really undergone like this modern boom. which on the one hand is like necessary but on the other hand it's quite sad because it's it's not like the nostalgic memories of my upbringing um so I really want because it was so much about how I grew up I really wanted to honor that and like put those memories into print and go to the souks and go and show the the little hole in the wall places and these farms because I don't know if it'll change one day or they won't be there anymore um so yeah it was really important for me to like add a bit of Bahrain in there and just to give it like this warmth and like a sense of like inviting the reader into my world.
28:36Yeah, I think it does a really good job of that. I loved also reading about like you sending your photographer to the disappearing island with your dad. Yeah, that was quite funny. They hadn't even met before, you know um Jarada is an island that's like owned by Bahrain like off the coast but it's not really an island just a sandbank you know um and I used to go there a lot when I was little like my dad is a fisherman he had a little boat and we'd go um the four of us me my sister mom and dad and have like a picnic on this beach when it was low tide because during a high tide it doesn't show anymore um and I just have such beautiful memories from this place um and yeah so I told Matt I had two Matt's two Matt photographers but Matt is from Liverpool and he's lived in Bahrain for like 15 years so he's practically a Bahraini now um and he's also a friend so I kind of when I said to him I just want to show the real Bahrain he understood immediately um and I just said to him I was like okay Matt you're gonna go with my dad he'll take you to this island he'd never been either um and they just totally hit it off he like he he called me up on the way back and he was so excited and and um he just loved it and I just I knew that feeling I knew that energy and I was like oh the magic is still there like the island is still magical even like two decades later.
30:03Yeah, I love that. And I'm curious, like, how did you kind of attach a recipe to this disappearing island, especially if it doesn't even exist half of the time? Yeah, it was hard because, you know, I was like, at first I was like, well, maybe, you know, it should be in the seafood chapter. It makes sense. It's like, it's like a little sandbank, should be something seafood. But I was just thinking of my mom used to always make like sandwiches for us and like chopped up vegetables, fruits, like anything that would be fine in like the icebox. And it was never anything glamorous, you know, but sometimes she'd make like sliced, be like roast chicken, tomato, onion, cream cheese, like sandwiches or tuna sandwiches.
30:49Or she'd do like loads of roasted veggies and like press it into like a big sourdough bun with like pesto and stuff. and um yeah I just thought I was like oh you know maybe I can put this into um a chicken salad like and then that kind of transpired into salad Olivier which is one of my favorite salads is the Iranian salad which is um got chicken and potato and egg in it kind of all that chopped up and it's usually like mayonnaise based but mine is like more yogurt um and yeah and it just kind of like transpired into like a salad Olivier and I called the recipe, the disappearing island salad Olivier.
31:30Um, so yeah, I love that. I'm curious, like thinking about all of the recipes in the book, if there was a recipe that you found was the most kind of difficult or complicated, uh, development and testing process to perfect. Yes. Uh, I would say, and this is, I think the most complicated recipe in the book, which is why I think, um, I don't know how many people will attempt it but i kept it in the book because this recipe is called jibabro bihan it's in the seafood chapter and they're basically prawn dumplings but not like asian style it's um the shell is made of blitz prawns and rice flour and it's stuffed with loads of fried onions and herbs and black lime and spices and golden raisins and it's and then you kind of make this sour tomato and tamarind broth from the prawn shells and you kind of simmer these dumplings in that broth and with loads of chard in it and this is a really really traditional dish like it's so old that people don't make it anymore and I saw it when I was younger on my grandparent my grandparents table we used to have dinner there twice a week every week every year and during Ramadan every single day and this dish would only make an appearance during Ramadan but you know it soon like stopped making an appearance as I got into my teenage years and people just don't really make it anymore because it's so time consuming and quite intricate.
33:03And it took me a little while to get it because I hadn't had it for so long. But I just kind of created my own flavors. And yeah, I kept it in the book because I wanted to keep it to preserve a Bahani tradition that I think is kind of dying. And that's why I put it in there. Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned this recipe, because when I was flipping through the book, I saw this and it really like, it does seem super difficult and time intensive, but there's so many sensibilities about it that I like. The fact that you're using the prawns and like the shell of the dumpling and not inside of it. And then that you're also using the shells separately.
33:44Like there's so many elements of it that I think just represent this like very much like nothing is wasted. Everything is being elevated style of cooking that I think is super cool. oh thank you yeah definitely it's like a lot of flavor building and there's it's very quite intricate but it really makes me like really appreciate i was like somebody invented this like somebody thought this up and i just really appreciate these old traditions um a lot more when i tried to make it and fit it into like modern day yeah as a contemporary recipe developer like do you often think about what it would be like to have been inventing these super traditional recipes.
Read the full transcript
34:25And like, I think the idea of like inventing a dish is something that seems almost like more rooted in the past and then in the present today. Yeah, absolutely. Like I, I feel like it's, I don't even know if anyone invents dishes anymore nowadays, like you can kind of put a different spin on something, but really it's like the same techniques over and over, especially with the rise of social media. Social media is so loud. the food world especially like you know I'm sure you're in it so you're probably more aware of it like because of people we follow etc and it's just like oh my god it's just everything that could be done has been done so yeah I do kind of think back to those times and like oh somebody has put this together but the interesting thing with Bahraini food is that every household has its own way.
35:14There's no like one correct way. It's not like, you know, with Italian food, like a carbonara, this is the way, this is the traditional way. These are the techniques. Like Bahraini food isn't like that. It's freestyle. As long as you keep the essence, which is like what we call in Arabic nefes, which is like the soul, the essence of a dish, as long as that's there, then it's Bahraini. But every house has its own little tips, like tricks of doing things differently. I love like nefes and like the soul of a dish. And I was wondering if you could kind of speak to what the book title means, because I loved reading about it in the book.
35:51So lugma means a bite in Arabic. And it's pronounced, I mean, I spelt it phonetically the way we would pronounce it in Bahrain, because the qaf, which is a letter in Arabic, Arabic a classical Arabic alphabet we soften it in Bahrain we never say we say we use a g like so lugma is the way we'd pronounce it and lugma means a bite and when I was thinking of the name of this book it came very naturally because I remember my grandfather who passed away a few years ago and he always said one day you're gonna write a book I don't think he ever envisioned it would be a cookbook but um he used to like cut out newspaper clippings of himself and and he gave my mom a file once when I was little and said uh Noel's gonna write a book one day so she needs to tell everyone that her grandfather was known in Bahrain so here's clippings of me and um and you know he was a feeder like my grandfather was like the heart of our family he really brought everyone together you know I said like we used to go twice a week every week and it was so important everything was centered around the table and my grandfather would often like he ate with his hands and eating with their hands as a skill I think like to not get it down you you really have to like know how to like properly like smush the rice it's the only way I can say it and you know and make a with the rice and often I think that if somebody makes you a dogmar says oh can I make you a little a bite they'll like really think about like okay this person is going to have one bite from my plate and I want to make sure they have a little taste of everything and they hand it to you so I say that lugma is the ultimate form of love because it's something that is created from someone's hand um really from their heart and they're handing it from one heart to another they're handing it to you.
37:50So, so yeah, it's, uh, and, and because I put so much love into Lugma, um, yeah, I, I just, it made sense to call it that. Yeah. I think as someone who likes to give bites of food as a love language, I totally resonated with that. Um, and it is just the perfect name for the book. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. If you're one of those last minute shoppers, you might know the feeling. Ideas are running low and the clock is ticking. Here's a fun idea. Aura Frames. Aura Frames is the solution with a GIF that feels personal, a little curated, and sent with love. And a GIF that can be purchased in no time with a few clicks of the mouse.
38:32Aura Frames are great. They sent me one to check out, and it was really cool and dumb simple to set up. I loaded photos using the app, and it was displaying them instantly. There are no limits to the amount of photos you can load, and you can customize messages with each photo. And here's the deal. You can preload an Aura frame with photos and have it directly sent to that special person in your life, gift-wrapped and all. There will be no price tag, and you can include a personalized message. Think about it. All those photos from this past summer's family reunion delivered in a digital frame.
39:04That is pretty cool. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get$35 off Aura's best-selling Carver Matte Frames, named number one by Wirecutter, by using promo code TASTE at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code TASTE. The deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support 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.
39:44There'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. ButcherBox is a true exception. I was sent a box of premium beef and pork and was blown away by the quality and variety. There was 100 % grass-fed pasteurized ribeye, tri-tip, and ground sirloin for my favorite at-home smash burger recipe.
40:19George Motes, you better watch your back. For pork, they sent me a beautiful center-cut pork loin for slow roasting. I was super impressed, and I haven't even talked about the ribs, which I cooked in my Instant Pot. There was a rub of salt, white pepper, and togarashi, and I had pressure cooked with water and apple cider vinegar. It was incredible. These ButcherBox ribs are amazing. For 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.
41:00Visit 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. And to close today, I want to play a little rapid fire game with you. So I'm going to have you play some favorites and ask you some questions and you'll just give me the first answer that comes to mind. Sure. Okay. Your favorite cookbook right now that is not one of your own? Bethlehem by Fadi Kattan so good a recipe from Lugma that you would make for dinner tonight
41:37if you had the ingredients well I have loads of aubergines at the moment so I'd probably make the burnt aubergine with fenugreek sauce tahini and fried shallots is that the stuffed eggplant or is that a different recipe in the box? that's like a different one in the veggie section It's like a veggie main. And I'm lucky I have a gas stove. So I love the smell of burnt aubergines. And I love that I can burn them on the fire. So that's probably what I would do. That's great. Your go-to food item to bring to a picnic?
42:14Ooh, my go-to food item to bring. It's probably going to be a salad Olivier. Okay. Because you can just stuff it into like lettuce wraps or into a sandwich and everybody loves it so your favorite ice cream flavor mint chocolate chip do you like it when it's like artificially green no no no no I don't no because it tastes then it tastes like a bit more I don't know what they put in it like a weird flavor but except actually I okay I take it back the Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip is artificially green but it is so good sometimes it just feels like nostalgically correct i think yeah it's true and you know you can't really get baskin robbins here i think it's like a more of an american slash bahrain thing um so i love that that's our crossover item yeah um a spice that you think more people should cook with at home?
43:16Fenugreek, specifically fenugreek seeds. I think they are, they're like little stones. So people are like, what do I do with this? So you kind of do need a spice grinder to blitz it, but it has such a lovely aromatic, like kind of bitter flavor. But when you pair it with the right spices and especially a bit of sugar, it creates the most amazing foundation for a lot of like stews and curries okay I have to buy some your favorite London bakery um Kosovo's it's um actually down the road from me and it's owned by uh my friend who used to run the bakery at Otselenghi he left many years ago and he'd always spoken about like opening up his own place and I just really like loved hearing his story about like he grew up with bakeries he has such an interesting background his mom is like Indian Muslim his dad is like a London Jewish he has all these like kind of like Jewish and Indian influences in his cooking and and he just wanted to like put this into life through a bakery which I just was so fascinated with and then you know he loves atulenghi didn't hear from him and then a few years later kasov's open like down the road for me and i don't know i just love stories like that and um yeah and they have the best he has like the best sourdough so yeah wow that sounds great i wish i lived close okay your favorite london like special occasion restaurant baranjek um is yeah i would say i really love it it's kind So it's like Iranian food, but kind of like elevated.
45:07So it has like home style vibes. There's like an open like grill. You see them making all the kabob and the rice and the bread, like flatbreads, grilling them and stuff. But it also is like kind of elevated and like you're like, oh, yeah, I would pay money for this. But it's become like so hard to get reservation now. Before it was like a bit of a hidden secret. Now it's been discovered. so I'm a bit annoyed. I'm like, damn it, I can't get a reservation at this place. Yeah, I tried to eat there last December when I was in London and I couldn't get a reservation. So I feel your pain. Yeah, so imagine as a Londoner.
45:45I'll plan ahead next time. Yeah, absolutely. You have to. Your go-to late night snack? Hot chocolate. What kind of milk? Hot chocolate. Just regular milk, which is weird because I went through a phase where I cut out milk because I felt like I had a dairy intolerance for years and years, especially when I was at the test kitchen. And then I think it was working in the test kitchen, tasting so many foods. My stomach was like constantly on fire and everything. It was like so many, it was so irritable. It was mad at me. And then when I left and I wasn't testing in that volume and tasting all of my colleagues' dishes, everything kind of calmed down.
46:25And I was able, I reintroduced like certain foods back into my diet, including milk, which is joyous because I've never felt like a hot chocolate really tastes the same when it's with like soy or oat milk. So yeah, it's quite nice to be able to have it again. Yeah, I think you're right. I'm so thrilled to hear that actually. Is that similar to you? Yeah, I mean, I think now I'm just talking about my gut health on the podcast, but I think like fermented, I think fermented dairy is easier. So like yogurt, um cheese no problem but I would never like sit down and drink a glass of milk and if I made a hot chocolate I think it would probably be in all milk but I don't think I think you're right it doesn't um it doesn't hit as hard if it doesn't have like that fatty dairy milk yeah no and honestly if you did a whole podcast on gut health I will join you because I can tell you all about my journey and I think it's something that's very specific to food content food recipe developers and chefs.
47:26I think, yeah, I have a whole theory behind it, but. Oh my God. Okay. We're going to make this happen just so I can speak up with you about it. My final question today is a scene from a book or a movie, like a fictional food scene that you wish you could eat in real life. A scene from a book or a movie. um um so this is so corny but it's basically just the um the harry potter scene of when they have the butterbeers and like yeah and then the drinks and chocolate trolley in the in the train um with the chocolate frog i don't know it all sounds so like whimsical and i kind of just want to be there enjoying all these like magical things obviously with superpowers and all that and a wand yeah everything tastes better when you can do magic yeah you know as a kid I loved Harry Potter and it's funny to be like an American kid reading the books because you know they would call something like a pumpkin pasty instead of a pastry and just the fact that it was missing that one letter I was like oh this is so magical and foreign oh that's so yeah it's yeah And I was the same.
48:42I was in Bahrain reading the Harry Potter books. I think I was like the only Bahrain-y kid reading them. And the funny thing is I never watched the movies. I only read the books. I never really got into the movies. Something more magical for me about the books. But I think it was like that transformative thing of my childhood. Yeah. Were you disappointed when you didn't receive a letter when you were old enough? Yeah, definitely. I was like, I'm a muggle? What? I was like, I know this isn't real, but some part of me is disappointed because what if it was? It would make so much more sense if someone told me I belonged in the magic world.
49:20Yeah. Well, if you're going to be a muggle, I'm glad that we got to eat all of your recipes and all this delicious food because of it. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Nora. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for having me. It's a great chat. Brian Vole, welcome to This Is Taste. It's so great to meet you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I've spoken about your books on three things earlier. I discovered menus by Brian at Kitchen Arts and Letters. The great owner, Matt Sartwell. Love that guy. Love that guy. Such a supporter of cookbooks. Hand sold me your book. Oh, did he?
49:57Absolutely. It's right at the checkout. And any good book seller will offer customers a great, you know. you know what you might like this one too that kind of voice yeah yeah absolutely uh he was so right i also bought your book at the great vivian booksellers in portland oregon uh which we're at so that's my setup i i really love what you're doing we're going to talk all about your process and what you're uh what you've really established you're on issue 12 now so but but brian tell us how you got into writing cookbooks so i love cooking that should come as no surprise to anybody listening to this podcast, but I love cooking and I love writing.
50:37And so those two together, I kind of thought for a long time that I would like to write a cookbook at some point. You know, I never really had the time, so I thought it would be something that I maybe did when I retired, sort of a Brian's favorite recipes kind of thing. And then a few years ago, I came up with what I thought was a really interesting concept. But even then, I wasn't going to sit down and write a 400-page cookbook all by myself. And then I remembered a fun fact from grade school that a lot of early novels were serialized. So rather than publish a book like you might pick up at a Barnes & Noble now, they published one chapter at a time in Atlantic Magazine or a popular magazine at the time.
51:29And then I thought to myself, wait a second, what if I serialized a cookbook? Has that ever been done before? And so that's when I started, you know, taking that idea I had and figuring out how to break it into smaller pieces. Because, of course, a small 36-page 5x7 cookbook is a lot easier to achieve than, you know, that 400-page tome of a cookbook. Oh, we know that. We make them here. They're complicated projects. And really, these are cookbooklets, you know, and the joy. That's a term I need to trademark. Definitely, you started that as a thing. I mean, they're so great to read because you have a process of writing these that is slightly uniform and though each one has a really wonderful introduction and really you're doing a great service.
52:22You're creating a menu. Why was that important, the formatting of these booklets? The format is important because it's the way I cook in a lot of ways. Now, I'm not sitting down and cooking 12 dishes every single night. But when you think about cooking dinner for yourself, you're not necessarily thinking about an individual recipe. you're not sitting down and making that one thing you kind of have to think about a balanced meal right you've got to have a protein and you've got to have a salad you've got to have vegetables and so sort of pairing these all together in important ways is important to me because again you're not really you know you're not cooking you're not cooking in a vacuum you're not cooking a recipe in a vacuum you're you're really thinking about the full menu, the full meal, all the way from, depending on how elaborate you want to get from your starters all the way through dessert.
53:24Yeah. And you get the shopping list too. And the shopping list. Which is really, really important. So basically you have six or seven courses and - Or eight or nine. Or eight or nine, depending on the book. And you have a list to start. I mean, really, this is what you have to buy to make this meal happen. And it's not that daunting. You have a real skill for paring down and kind of swapping in or using ingredients in multiple spaces. And I think that's needed. I'll be honest. I'm lazy. One of the first things I do when I do encounter a recipe, a new recipe, is I kind of dumb it down. Right. Because, again, we're talking about a complete meal, even if it's just a Tuesday night.
54:09It's maybe two, maybe three dishes. But I don't want to overcomplicate things and use every single pot that I've got because I've also got to make a salad. I've also got to make a dessert or whatever it is that I'm making that night. So I do, the first thing I do is simplify a recipe because that just kind of makes it easier for myself. I do think a lot of recipe writers out there kind of approach a single recipe as a singularity, right? you're going to make this recipe and you're not going to make anything else. So I try to broaden the context and say, all right, well, you're going to make this recipe, but you're also making a handful of other things.
54:50And so let's be conscientious of the dishes that we're using. Let's be conscientious of the ingredients that we're using. Let's not go overboard. Let's not go crazy. I don't need three kinds of onion in one recipe. Let's just use one. Let's pare it down. This is like straight talk from a passionate home cook, and that's needed in publishing. And I think that's why this has been a successful series. I want to just go over one of the menus that spoke to me, number seven. And to me, this feels slightly summery, but I think a lot of these menus can be used year-round. You start with a mezcal and passion fruit cocktail, grilled sweet potatoes with cilantro, scallion, and lime.
55:28You've got a Portuguese and potato octopus dish. There's cherry tomatoes with cardamom lime yogurt. as the main grilled chicken with green sauce. And then for dessert, preserved lemon bars. What a complete meal. But again, that shopping list is not that daunting. This is a really, really great dinner party you've set up. Yeah, that was a fun one. Yeah, each of the menus is ostensibly seasonal. So you're right, that is one of the summer menus. You might notice if you look at the cover design, they change every four issues. So there's a summer, there's a winter, there's a fall and the spring. and then I change the cover design.
56:05Each of the dishes in the menus is, you know, paired to sort of work together both in flavor and texture. You want to mix there when you're compiling a dinner party menu. But then I'm also trying to reduce waste. I think that is one of the key components of this. And so if I'm going to say, hey, use egg yolk in one of the recipes, let's say a Caesar salad, then we're definitely going to use that egg white in something. Maybe it's a savory granola. If I'm going to ask you to buy a bunch of parsley, everybody knows that a bunch of parsley goes farther than just one recipe. So let's use it in two recipes.
56:44And also let's maybe use the parsley stems in an interesting way because a lot of people just throw that into the compost bin. Like, let's use all the parts of the ingredient that we can just so we don't throw things away. So, Brian, are you throwing dinner parties? Are you recreating your own menus for a crowd? For a small crowd. Yeah, yeah. I will say I think the menus I say feed six to eight. But, yeah, I'll be perfectly honest. I don't throw as many dinner parties now as I did when I was younger. I don't quite have the energy that I did. But each of the menus does end in a party, right, is I sort of come up with the idea and I tinker with it and I try different recipes and I try to get them all to work.
57:29And then once everything clicks, that's when I'm like, okay, friends, let's have a party. Let's hang out. Let's sort of see if these actually work in real life. And also let's just put on some music and drink some wine and hang out and have a good time. So when you're developing the recipes, you're doing it solo. Are you in your home kitchen? Is that right? Yep. Yeah. And then sometimes you're bringing people into the mix. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm recipe testing almost every day. I'm trying different things, different ingredients, different methods almost every day. And so I guess a lot of my entertaining anymore is sort of less the official dinner party and more, hey, friend, I just made this chicken recipe.
58:13Do you want to come over because I have leftovers or I don't want to have to have leftovers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just sort of it's a lot more informal now than it is than an official dinner party. But of course, throwing a dinner party is fun, right? You want to sort of be fancy and maybe get a little bit dressed up and have people over. And like the formal entertainment aspect of it is nice. It's like real talk about anybody who develops recipes. You're typically not. It's usually just like part of the process. And I've got a couple of things I'm working on. Come over. And that's how it really goes.
58:46That's actually where a lot of the interesting pairings come up. Is because I do have so many leftovers in my refrigerator at any given time. So on a Monday, I might make one dish. And on a Tuesday, I might make something completely different. By Wednesday, I've got all these leftovers. And I'm like, let me put these together. How does that taste? Oh, that's actually quite good. Or that's disgusting. I'm never getting that again. But yeah, there's a lot of trial and error that way. Tell me about your own education in food. I mean, are you looking at cookbooks? Do you have cookbooks around? Did you ever have a formal lesson in cooking?
59:26I never had a formal lesson in cooking. I'm all self-taught. I should bring up my mother at this point just because she also loves to cook. And so we grew up with some amazing meals. She worked. I have four brothers. So there's five of us. But she also was really kind of curious in the kitchen and would make interesting dishes that she would just sort of use the kids as a guinea pig. And so she might make something and it was delicious and we all wolfed it down. She might make something and it wasn't very good and we just order a pizza. But I think that was that was definitely an inspiration growing up and having having that background.
1:00:11and I never really helped in the kitchen, except for cleaning dishes on occasion. But just that background of, you know, somebody who really introduced me to home cooking and not just home cooking, but sort of expanding my horizons and seeking out interesting recipes and interesting ingredients. So I sort of went into adulthood with that experience. and then from there I kind of expanded on my own and like I said I'm self-taught and I just sort of was it from cookbooks or was it online like how were you teaching yourself um a mix you know I am a millennial and so I did grow up with the internet um but of course I love cookbooks um I do love to travel and one of the things I do in preparation for a trip is I buy a cookbook from wherever it is that I'm going for a handful of reasons, one of which is I might come across a specific dish that I want to seek out.
1:01:16You know, I might have a book on Mexican food, and now I come across a dish that's really interesting. Yeah. And so I, like, actively seek out that specific dish. Sometimes I find it, sometimes I don't. Some cookbooks, especially international ones, actually give like specific places. And so if I get that cookbook in time before I, or while I'm planning the trip, then I might actually go to a place. So I was in, for example, I was in Italy a few years ago and I definitely wanted to go to Rome. But I was also reading this cookbook about Poulian cuisine. And I read about this town called Bari. Yeah.
1:01:58And an octopus sandwich. And I was thinking to myself, yes, I'm definitely the type of person who's going to sit on a train for five hours from Rome to Bari so that I can have an octopus sandwich. And it was worth it. I love that you went to Bari. I've been there. It's a great, great town, great food city. And your interest in doing the work is wonderful to hear. Yeah. What's production like for these books? I mean, how many are you doing a year? And I know, are you designing it yourself as well and doing the whole thing? I am a one man show. I love that. So it starts with research. Like I said, I travel a lot and I read cookbooks and I try to develop these recipes based on those travels.
1:02:39Yeah. And then I usually start a menu with like one or two ideas that I'm particularly excited about. Sometimes it's a specific recipe. Sometimes it's an ingredient. Sometimes it's an interesting way to use kitchen scraps. An example of that is menu five or six. I can't remember what the one with tapache in it. Oh, yeah. Tapache is a fermented drink from Latin America, mostly from Mexico. There it's seasoned with like cinnamon and star anise. But I came across it when I was in Puerto Rico and it's it's on seasoned there. But I was really excited about just, oh, my gosh, I can use the pineapple rind for something.
1:03:26And so you just sort of start with an idea and then it builds from there. because, of course, if I'm using the pineapple rind in tepache, then I have to use the pineapple in something else. So now I'm thinking through recipes that use pineapple, and I'm working through recipes for pineapple, and then, of course, that is going to have some kind of scrap, and I put that in air quotes, that needs to be used. And so it's sort of this cascading effect developing these recipes or developing these menus. And then, of course, you get to a point where, like, wait a second, this doesn't... this doesn't quite fit.
1:04:01And so now you kind of go back to the drawing board and rework that puzzle because it is kind of a puzzle. It is a puzzle and you thread it really well. And how many are you doing a year? I started with four, then three, then two. But yeah, it really just kind of depends on my schedule and how much time I have. I tend to set these like arbitrary deadlines for myself. You know, I'm going to have menu number 12 done, It's a summer menu by June. Of course, it's June and menu 12 is not done. Okay, fine. But I also acknowledge the fact that these deadlines are arbitrary. Yeah. Right. They're self-published.
1:04:43I don't have a publisher breathing down my neck. And so I do get to kind of take that break. And I do have the privilege, I guess, of keep working on it. Right. is if it's not perfect, I don't want to put it out there. No, definitely. Do you hear from your fans on social media and email who are cooking through it? What's that like? So fulfilling. Literally last week, someone messaged me on Instagram, and they were like, we did menu number nine, and they sent me pictures, and they had this lovely dinner party, and they just showed me all the dishes that they had made, and it really is quite fulfilling to get that feedback from people.
1:05:28I love that you really set people up for success. You're giving them a very clear roadmap. And I think for many book buyers, that's the goal. I mean, some books are written as historical texts and to learn about the culture, why you buy books before you travel. But a lot of book buyers just want to make dinner or have a dinner party. And yours is as simple as it comes. So I love that. So how can you buy the books? I mean, talk about some of your partners on the indie bookstore front and like, I imagine you can buy them online as well. Yep. So you can buy them at my website, menusbybryan.com. And then, well, really, I started with menu number one, of course.
1:06:09And then once I had number one, then I started shopping it around. The obvious retailer are cookbook stores. There are a handful of stores around the country that sell exclusively cookbooks. We've chatted about Kitchen Hearts and Letters here in the city. So they stock them there. Bold Fork Books down in the D.C. area. We mentioned Vivian out in Portland, now serving in L.A. So there are, I think, maybe nine or ten cookbook stores around the country, and I think I'm in most of them. And then also just a handful of gourmet grocery stores. I thought that would be a good pairing. And so I've been reaching out to gourmet grocery stores around the country to see if they would stock them.
1:07:00There's a place in L.A. called Botanica that stocks them as well. They were my first customer, actually. Cool. Props to them. Botanica, great store. Yeah, it's a great place. Kitchen Arts and Letters, Matt over there, held out. he made me come up with two issues before he would uh before he would stock it but he was like i like i like the concept here come to me when you've got another one that's uh that's how matt rolls you know he understands the market but you saw a lot of the kitchen arts i'm sure i love it have you have you thought about bringing it to the the real world doing your own pop-up that is inspired by your work?
1:07:39There is a fine line between writing and slinging cookbooks and then becoming a caterer. For sure. So like on the one hand, you've got to cook some of the recipes so people know what they're getting into. On the other hand, I don't want people to hire me as a caterer. So I do a handful of little pop-up things to sell cookbooks and maybe some adjacent items. I did a little Christmas pop-up at a wine shop in my neighborhood last year. A friend of mine runs the wine shop, Radical Wines in Clinton Hill. And he let me do a little pop-up and we just drank some wine and sold some jams and sold some cookbooks.
1:08:19And it was just a lot of fun. That's nice. It sounds like this is a business. You work very hard on it, but you also have a real perspective about what you can and can't do. it's a real lesson about indie publishing I should I mean I am 30 something and so I have sort of dabbled in you know putting my toes in food and publishing you know during my 20s like I said I'm a millennial I had a blog when blogs were a thing I had an Instagram account when Instagram accounts were a thing and it was just sort of hard to really latch on to it you know the internet culture is is hard right the algorithms are just really hard to to to to do well um especially if you have another full-time job you know the googles and the facebook's and the instagrams really reward you for posting regularly and then they um and then they punish you for not posting regularly and so there's sort of problems with that regardless right that's one the reasons there's so much garbage on the internet.
1:09:26But when I, so, you know, having an unsuccessful blog and an unsuccessful Instagram account means I knew what I didn't want to do. Or I knew what wasn't going to work. So finally, when it came to, you know, writing menus, I was like, you know what, let's just, let's just take this into the real world. Because people need that. People want that. People want an object to hold in their hands. And I also have the benefit of, you know, it being under the radar and kind of niche where people think it's cool, right? People. Yeah, it's beyond cool. I mean, it's special. It's beyond cool. I love that. Beyond cool, Brian.
1:10:05I mean, it's a great gift as well. If you're looking for a stocking stuffer in the holiday season or just in general, a great price point and gives you a full menu. Love it. Yeah. So, Brian, where do you want to be in five years with Menus by Brian? I mean, you have some directions you can go in. I mean, do you want to double down and do more? Do you like this pace? I like this pace. Again, it's just sort of on my own terms. I do have a worry that I'll run out of recipes, which is an absurd thing to say. But if you think about it, like most recipes are sort of derivatives of other recipes. And so I've already done a roast chicken, and so I don't want to do another roast chicken.
1:10:49So I do think there is maybe an end of life to menus. I don't know when that is but I do want to kind of keep doing that for as long as it really makes sense but I'm also not going to push it there will be a natural ending and I don't want to push it beyond that but yeah I think I'll just keep cooking and I'll just keep writing I've got some other ideas percolating in my mind on other concepts and projects which aren't ready but it would be fun to sort of report on it here, we're hands of yours Brian Voll, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was a great time.
1:11:32This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. 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.
From the publisher
Noor Murad is a Bahrain-born, New York–trained, London-based chef and the author of the wonderful new cookbook Lugma. You may know her recipes from her time running the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen and contributing to the books Falastin, Shelf Love, and Extra Good Things. Now it’s time to get to know Noor herself through this delicious collection of traditional and re-imagined dishes from Bahrain and beyond.
Also on the show we catch up with Brian Voll, the creative force behind the innovative cookbook series Menus By Brian.
Get your tickets to our live event on July 23 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Featuring conversations with Padma Lakshmi, Hailee Catalano & Chuck Cruz, and a live taping of Bon Appétit Bake Club with Jesse Szewczyk and Shilpa Uskokovic. Ticket sales benefit One Love Community Fridge.
Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We’d love to hear from you.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
