667: This Pasta Conversation Will Change Your Home Cooking Life with Joshua McFadden

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0:31you know i used to have a restaurant they'd be like oh you have an italian restaurant i love fresh pasta yeah that's what people would say i get that but the things like you can do with dried like carbonara or bucatini or those things and you start playing those other things like you just it's just to me it's just a better better pasta this is taste i'm your host matt rotbard

0:59This one is a long time coming, and I'm thrilled to welcome Joshua McFadden into the studio. Joshua is a chef based in Oregon and author of one of the most beloved cookbooks of all time, Six Seasons. And he's back with a new one that is equally incredible. Six Seasons of Pasta takes the same six seasons principle to pasta cookery, and it might just break your brain open. We talk about some simple tricks for cooking pasta at home before digging into Joshua's career, his consulting work, and we catch up about the kale salad, something that Joshua is unbelievably credited with inventing. No, for real, you gotta stick around for this kale salad update.

1:40I hope you enjoy this episode.

1:45Joshua McFadden, welcome to This Is Taste. How are you? Doing well, thank you. Long time coming. I'm a huge fan of your cookbooks. and you as a chef, I visited your restaurants when you were running those in Portland years ago. We often have the cookbook question here, what is your favorite cookbook? And Six Seasons has been mentioned a dozen times. So congrats. That's amazing. It's still wild for me to hear that by every stretch of the imagination. Yeah, man. I mean, and you have a new book we'll be talking about, Six Seasons of Pasta, which I got to read last night, and really remarkable work.

2:19There's a lot of pasta books in our world, and this one's new and fresh. I appreciate that. That's cool. Well, when you're in New York, I have to ask, where are you dining out? What's on the list right now? I have a huge list. I have gone over to Kazanori, the hand roll bar, like twice. Smart. Honestly, it's just so good and simple and fast and easy and delicious and what you want it to be, like crispy nori, warm rice, cold fish. Yeah. Then went to, I always pronounce it wrong, but Louvior? Levodor. Levodor. Why can I never say this? It took me like six guests saying they went there to actually pronounce it correctly.

2:59Say it again. Levodor. Levodor. Yeah. Levodor. It's so easy to say. So that basically kind of shook my entire life and knocked somebody out of my top three experiences in dining and restaurants. So I just kind of stopped going places now. I love this. And the strip and just keeping it simple and having falafel and all these things. I mean, it was that good. As a chef, what struck you most from your visit to Le Vaudour? It's just the restaurant the world needs in many ways. It's just the package and the rejuvenation of walking in and then going out different. It's not normal anymore. And it's such a high level.

3:35So it was really special. Yeah. From the service to the cuisine to the space. I mean, it hits all those notes as well. Yeah, it got me. I love that sentiment. it's been mentioned many times, tough reservation. Did you call the bat phone for it? I should have. I sort of did, but not really. I still can't even say it, remember? So it was a happy accident. It was a happy accident. Well, let's talk about cookbooks. Joshua, tell me, you know, what got you interested in cookbooks? I think you published this book in 2016, you published in 2017, and it really just, like, is this fully formed, incredible work, like, highly regarded work.

4:14and you know, that was your first book. Did you have a long past with cookbooks? I did. I did, yeah. It's actually, I've always been obsessed with them even before I started cooking. I think I, back in the day when I was going to film school in Chicago, Columbia, I had all these Charlie Trotter books and I didn't know why. And I think I went to like the grocery store to like find like brune raw carrots. Like the pre-cut? I thought it was a variety. The pre-cut? No, I thought it was a variety. It was a variety. I had no idea. so um i always had them around and i kind of i didn't really know why then yeah i fell in love with restaurants um from somehow film school to restaurants i don't know they're they're very similar to me as far as like telling a story and all the art that's being touched within them if you do them right in my opinion um and then went to culinary school and kind of never looked back until the pandemic.

5:11But funny story, when I was working here like 20 years ago, working at Franny's in Brooklyn, I used to go up to Kitchen Arts and Letters all the time. And I remember I was reminding Matt of this story the other day when I was signing my books, which was an out-of-body experience in itself, me being there. And I used to go in there all the time and ask and try to find books about seasonality, and there was nothing. And I asked them that question. I was like, hey, do you have anything that would like be a guide for what I'm looking for within seasons? And Matt would know. And he would know. And you know what he said?

5:41He's like, no, but I think we could, you could, he's like looking around. He's like, how about the New Jersey Farmer's Almanac for next year? And I just left. And there was all these books like River Cottage, even Jamie Oliver's books, Like all these things that they were doing over there that were just so much more. Like even the River Cafe books. Yeah. Just in such a different level. So I was always drawn to those type of books that were like somehow like simpler and older. And I was kind of avoiding the big like this is the bully section, if you will. Which I love, but also just wasn't the thing that I'm interested in.

6:29Well, you were thinking of it probably as a chef, using these books as an actual resource to cook from versus maybe— A thousand percent, yeah. It just was—it didn't seem—like simplicity didn't seem like a thing. And it's—and that's the hardest thing to do. And then so if you're going to do something simple, it has to be about the ingredient that's in season. Otherwise, you're not doing anything right, in my opinion. Yeah. So I was always trying to find those moments. Where did the six seasons of our calendar, where did that idea come from? I think it was just kind of a happy accident that we were all kind of talking about how do we draw attention to the idea that you should be paying attention.

7:14As opposed to if it was called four seasons, I think it would have just kind of gone over it. And then I'd also really do think that working on a farm, I really noticed that there was like moments in micro seasons that were happening that I didn't know about until I was I had that experience. So it was another way of kind of drawing attention to like there's peak things that are happening in these moments. And there's things that you can look for, talk to a farmer at a farmer's market or be aware of. summer in particular, you know, the stretching of summer and the idea that the market changes so quickly or slower in some parts of America.

7:47But the idea that you can articulate that, you know, May is different from August and completely different. Completely different. Yeah. Completely different. Yeah. Or the endless frustration of snap peas and English peas in June or sometimes getting into July. It's like, oh my God. Or zucchini in June. Yeah. I think we've done so many, we've gone so far, but there still seems to be confusion with some of it. So keep pushing the message. I can't let it pass. You were in Chicago in art school at Columbia and discovering restaurants. What are the restaurants of your era in Chicago at that time? Blackbird.

8:31Paul Conn, one of the best chefs in the world. Agree hard. I mean, 1 ,000%. One of the just geniuses. Frontera Grill. Love it. Unbelievable. Changed my life. Honestly. Yeah. I love that you say that because we have a Rick interview we're going to run pretty soon. And I feel like the discourse around Rick is really interesting right now. It's so interesting. And yeah, we could spend a lot of time talking about what I think you might be talking about and all the other things. Yeah. I mean, people want to cancel the guy and it sucks. Which is wild. I have such a different idea of that now. I just literally pulled out Andy Ricker's Pock Pock book.

9:08I built all these new book shelves in my house and I had them stored and I was pulling them out and I just, what a wealth of information that was that it could only come from that mind, which is so fascinating thinking about like Rick at the same time but I've only had I had a phone call with him back in the day and I explained this story to him when I was thinking about the food that I wanted to do, it was always kind of Italian food and Vietnamese food and mixing food that I was inspired by. But at that time, it was all about like these higher level restaurants, like I must work at the French laundry or those things.

9:43So it took me a while to get to where I was getting to, but it was honestly, it was a mango ice cream at the slanted door that got me to a path of simplicity and seasonality because I watched this cook fold in a freshly diced mango into it. That's not normal. And like to get those textures and like, It was a really eye-opening thing. And then I had this rabbit tamale at Frontera Grill because I used to go as a poor cook and you could sit at Frontera Grill and order off of both menus. Oh, cool. And I would just drink like – I couldn't afford a margarita, which would have been nice, but they just had the simple limeades.

10:24Yeah. They were super fresh and made really well. And I just ordered off both menus. And I had this rabbit tamale. And I remember this guy that was sitting next to me, like kind of laughing about how, oh, rabbit or this blah, blah, blah and all this stuff. And like, it's not really that important or whatever. And it's just like, it just made this really interesting connection where I was like, this is coming from this farm, like right over in Indiana, it's like Amish farm and like that connection. And then the way that he was looking at that food was just so authentic in that idea. And it kind of continued to lead me towards that.

10:56And I told him that story on the phone, and I'm pretty sure he wanted to hang up because he's like, you got to Italian food based on this experience? And I was like, no, I'm saying like the simplicity of all these three cuisines that I love so much is based on those same principles. Completely different in many ways, obviously. But it's still the same ethic of using a farm from Indiana and not having to ship things in the way that the French Laundry or Jean-Georges, for example, shipping in so many products in that early 2000s ethic that you're talking about when you're thinking local and seasonal.

11:34Right. Which is like obviously trite terms now, but back then it was pretty progressive. R.I.P. Charles Fan, by the way. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That was wild. I actually worked for the restaurant Roxanne's that he was affiliated with, the Raw restaurant in the Bay Area, which was really amazing. Yeah. I love that story about Chicago, too, because you were there at a very cool time with the restaurant. Yeah. Then I went back after all that experience, and I ended up staging around and did a stage with Grant way back in the day when he was still up in Evanston at Trio. Okay, sure. He had his own thing, which was that I had the meal there, which blew me away.

12:15And then, um, worked our subject true. And then I ended up working at, um, North pond, which was fun. Yeah. It was in the park and I got fired from there. It was awesome. This does happen in a chef's career. Was it, was it merited though? Was the, you know, you, you fire people, I'm sure. So, you know, no, it was merited in the sense that we just never got along. And he had said to me, this isn't a school. I just asked him to be annoying questions. but I went from there to work moving to New York. Yeah. And so I think because of that discipline and the absolute chaos and the unstructuredness of it, I was able to learn how to do more than I thought I could do by the time I got out of there.

12:55So it all worked out. And I annoyed the hell out of him, but then I found out that I just didn't, that wasn't my style. That wasn't my thing. He still had the best, but he was like the, I think he was like the chairman of the green market or something like that so he we had amazing product it was just we did way too much to it most often yeah and so lesson learned for you so franny's is where you spend a lot of time in new york in that kitchen franny's was the first one it was an accident yeah but that was like what i really believe one of the restaurants that changed yeah everything and people sadly don't really know that but people that know that no i think some of our listeners who are younger don't know that reference at all which is sad and you can't even get the book anymore which is even more sad oh That's crazy.

13:36That is interesting. Well, I'm not sure who published it, but it should be back in print. Important restaurant. Well, we could talk restaurants all day, but I want to get to your 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. AuraFrames 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. AuraFrames are great. They sent me one to check out, and it was really cool and dumb simple to set up.

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15:00That'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. 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 restaurateurs will reimagine 65 years of the city's iconic astronomy, crafting inventive, nostalgia-inspired dishes with a modern twist.

15:45Prepare 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. How do you think about pasta in this six seasons, you know, context that you just outlined? I think it works really well. I think I had to spend a lot of time to be able to find out how it does, to be honest. I mean, there was a lot of things you think in a box like that in some degree, which you would think would open up more.

16:28But it's kind of confining into like figuring out a season. So I don't know how many recipes there are with pasta and turnips, but I found one that really works. I had that in my notes. I was going to ask you about that. You have celery root cacio e pepe as well. That's like, that's a whole, that, have you made that yet? No, I haven't made it. I just got the book recently. We're getting close to it, right? Oh, no, wait until after Christmas. Yeah, after Christmas time, yeah. When it's in the storage and then you got nothing. But that one's mind boggling, the way it smells. and the way that it tastes and how like, wow, what's happening here?

17:05It's pretty wild. I know. Very cool. So here's the zoom out about pasta. I mean, pasta is such a regional thing in Italy, right? And of course it's seasonal because the ethic of many European countries to cook that way. So it's like understated. But when you think about like pasta books, it's all about region and about technique, fresh versus extruded, et cetera. But the seasonality of pasta, it had to have been challenging to think about it that way. Kind of flipping it on its head. It was and it wasn't. Okay. I think I had luckily a lot of years under my belt and running a restaurant like Ava Jean's where – and anyone that has a pasta program.

17:54And there's so many of them now that are so great all over the world. but you are literally doing the same thing with just a different ingredient and slight changes based on the ingredient. So there's a real simplicity and a repetition to it that is just the way that it needs to be. So it was kind of one of the things I needed to explain the most, that it's not really about reinventing the world. It's about just inserting a new ingredient. Does it make sense? It makes sense, and you see it very clearly when you get to deep winter, you know when you get to some of these recipes that clearly are like way outside of the vocabulary you find in Amelia Romagna oh yeah a thousand percent yeah and I wasn't even like looking to Italy honestly as I don't I haven't for a long time I mean I've learned how to hear in New York like working at Lupa or other places and I was lucky enough to spend time living in working in Rome and then understanding it so there's such a level of importance that I put on understanding how to sauce, how to cook a noodle and sauce a noodle properly.

19:01And that's, and then understanding the classics and then my own versions and how I'm comfortable with that in some way. Yeah. I hope that makes sense because it's, obviously I wouldn't have understood any of it if it wasn't for them, but at the same time, it's like somewhere found my own little voice. I would like to think it's extremely clear in the That makes sense. It makes perfect sense because it's extremely clear in the book because you start with ragu. And we'll get there. But I want to back up and ask about the pastas. You're using all dry pastas, extruded pastas. And you're not going into the fresh pasta paradigm.

19:37And it's interesting. It's a choice. I like that. I think it's more accessible that way as opposed to doing the big, you know, dissertation about fresh pasta, which many books do a great job. How do you make that choice? I mean, honestly, I think when we started out, I had an outline that was for both. Yeah, I figured. And then I had to take out like 70 pages of this one. So there'll be another book, probably more about pasta, more than another one. But at the end of the day, I like dried more than I like fresh. Full stop. I think there's going to be more dried pasta that's consumed in the world today than fresh.

20:16and I think the misconception is you know I used to have a restaurant oh you have an Italian restaurant I love fresh pasta that's what people would say I get that and for me it's like in dumpling form with like ravioli or whatever or gnocchi or those things or pappardelli and those things but it's very specific to me but the things like you can do with dried like carbonara or bucatini or those things and you start applying those other things to me it's just a better better pasta. It's the same thing like the chicken noodle soup in the book is really funny because when you do that for people, they're like, wait.

20:50They're always used to having the big raft-looking noodles. And then you change that idea and put something that's al dente in it, and connections are made. You can see it. Yeah, the textural contrast of a dente pasta in a chicken noodle and you have a great recipe there. Very smart. But I think what's important about dry pasta is buying the right one because Because you make a great effort in the book about buying. So for this show, how are we buying our pastas? What are we thinking about? Well, there's a lot of great American producers. Now, more than ever, Flower and Water, great restaurant.

21:25So I'm still there doing a great job. Della Terra, Iowa, amazing. There's a bunch of other ones. Italy-wise, Risa Kella di Bruzzo is always one that I really gravitate towards as like my go-to of all shapes that I trust. And then there's just a bunch of other ones that you can kind of geek out on. And like the process is really having great dyes or molds to extrude from and also like drying slowly, right? That's like the big difference. Well, I think great grains first. Well, of course. I know you know that, but I'm just saying like you smell it when you cook it, right? Right, right, right. And yes, the extruding process through a bronze dye that it allows the thing that the world knows about now that everyone talks about is important because that's what absorbs the actual sauce and the condiment.

22:15And then the drying, yeah. Without having a really slow drying process, it wouldn't work. It'd just kind of fall apart. Yeah, very important. I think when you get some of the blue box stuff, you can see it right away. The blue box stuff. It's like purple stuff, that old commercial, you know, Sunny D or purple stuff. It's like the blue stuff. Right. I mean, I like my blue guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I'm not going to be a snob. I like my blue guys sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you. I hear you. You hear me? Okay. You have a great step-by-step for cooking pasta, for dressing pasta with condiment.

22:44And I don't want to burn too much of this conversation. You should just buy the book. I know many will. It's a great book. But one step that was interesting to me was for ragu particularly, which I think is a great pasta to start with that you have at the beginning of your book, is you've got your pan of ragu. You've got your boiling pasta. You've got your dry pan. and you're adding water to start, which I've cooked a lot of pasta. I don't think I, I don't do that and I'm doing it wrong. Talk us through that kind of method of, and getting to the emulsification step, which is key. I mean, honestly, that really came from just working in professional restaurants, right?

23:23I mean, the idea that you just have this big ragu that you're making and then that's what you're serving on light is obviously, we all know that's not happening. So you make it, and then you're storing it, and then you're taking it out of there. So if you were to just take it straight out of the pan, in my opinion, it's going to tighten up too much anyways. Exactly. By the time that you get it to the point where it's heating it. And all you're doing with the ragu typically is cooking it until it's all brought together, which is cooking out a lot of the moisture. Yeah. so by adding the moisture back with the water and then putting in there and bringing it back up together you're kind of just bringing it back to where it was before you cooled it off and then it's just a really a great way to be able to do that at home for people especially now where you can just like make a big batch and then you freeze it like i do it now just like grab pints and then like you can do it really quickly you can just throw the block in yeah and then all you need right after that is like you know a little bit butter is amazing and then the cheese is great yeah that's it really and then from there like again like you have chicken rig it can just it's endless throw lettuce in there and black pepper or chilies or go in all these different directions yeah keep it simple but like keep going it's a great just step and i think the tendency for a lot of home cooks is to have their big pot of sauce and then throw the pasta into the sauce right right and then it just it tightens right away right and then we then we try to add stock like pasta water and it becomes something out that we don't want and then you're yeah i mean that's pasta is not easy to cook yeah the i mean and that and the idea is that everyone thinks that it is you know it's everyone's like oh it's the date night thing that the one thing that they can do you know but and that's fine that's great everyone everyone should just be cooking but But it's like even now when I cook pasta, when it goes in the water, I'm like anxious, nervous until like it's going into a pan and then all the way to the end.

25:31Nine out of ten times, most likely it's going to be exactly what I want. But there's always one, is it too salty or is it too this? And if you're not doing that and messing up, then I don't think you're doing it right. and even most recently I was doing a podcast with a new friend and it was very apparent that they didn't read the book or the recipes okay happens not in this show though yeah and and it was it was actually really really cute and it was really it left an imprint because as we were cooking there was this idea of like oh we're feeding all these people I'm like yeah but all the recipes are based for two I'm like do you have a a scale I'm like really why and then I pull out I was like wing and I was like because it's built for two because that's a very safe place to be and that's the way most people are going to home cooks are going to cook right yeah and and then so you know what's right if you keep doing that you know for you making it for us like this is great next time I'd blah blah blah and then if you want to do it for four people it's getting hard and you're going above four people you're on your own yeah so you better at least understand how it's great before you think that six or eight people because that's hard for me yeah that's hard for any like yeah professional chef or something.

26:39It is. It really is. And we're talking about the timing, to be clear. All the things, yeah. The pot size, all the things, the right amount of condiment, everything. The ratio of the condiment. And I know it sounds crazy because it's just pasta, but it's never been just pasta. It's never been just pasta to me. My friend, you're in a safe space. It's not just pasta here. This is an important tradition. I like that you have the tip, which I have never used, is to have fresh water boiling on the back because putting too much of the pasta stock can be like kind of bad I mean we like salty things yeah it absorbs and it just reduces down and it can go very wrong and the only way to wash that out sometimes is with fresh water and kind of like bring it back that was another restaurant trick that I learned but I remember we were doing an event at a restaurant that I worked with and this actual Italian chef that couldn't speak any English came in and he was showing us what we were doing for this event and he looked over at the pot that just had water and he smiled and he looked and he went like this.

27:38Oh, that's great. So it was such a like a, it felt right. Like we were doing, like we knew what we were doing. Let's go back to Rome because I wanted to ask about your connection to Italy. You obviously have a deep connection, but you work there. And I know the book isn't rooted in Italian history and culture. I mean, you're doing your own style, Joshua, which is why it's so cool. But what was it like working in Italy and learning these techniques in your career? um it was it was amazing first of all just being there everything about it obviously the way it looks smells everything was it was it was i wish i would have done it sooner in my career yeah um but i think young cooks often think like oh that's the that's where i'll go when i'm blah blah blah at that point and so i wish i would have gone sooner but when i went what i realized that I was in a comfortable spot understanding what I knew from right and wrong from like simplicity and or like what al dente was is the idea of it like all those things so that was a really like eye-opening thing and then I think by that time I already had a little bit of my own like idea of what Italian food was to me um and it was really rewarding to be able to have even during that experience or going back and cooking for people and with people.