691: Samin Nosrat Does It Again

25:50So that was my plan for this. But as I started to do it, I realized that what I was trying to collect and organize and communicate was so much more abstract than salt, fat, acid, and heat. And honestly, even in salt, fat, acid, and heat, salt, and fat, and acid were much easier to organize and write and think about than heat was because they're material things. They're tangible and heat is this ineffable sort of force of energy. And that took a lot more work for me to figure out how to write about. And here I was choosing these four sort of abstract, you know, topics of like time, resources, ingredients, preferences, and how to sort of universalize that felt like another 20 years of work when I sat down to think of it.

26:41And I kind of collapsed under the weight of that thought. so I asked the publisher who is in this very building we are recording in to uh give me I would give him his money back and I would not have to write this book and they all said it's okay like you don't have to write that book you can write any book you want but honestly I was so melted down that any book felt impossible or just so far away so I really had to come back to myself And in doing that, I realized I had really lost my way. I had lost my own relationship to cooking, my own desire to cook, my own desire to really even eat. I felt so lonely and so sad.

27:23You know, even apart from the pandemic, I felt lonely and sad. And then, of course, that like heavy layer of loneliness and sadness on top of it. And then I was processing all sorts of my own sort of grief and like personal history. And I felt like a shill, like a capitalist corporate shill that was just trying to sell people something that I didn't have any desire to make. and I was like why do I even need to write another cookbook I already told you everything I know and believe about cooking I have nothing else to say and eventually one of my agents said I don't know why you make it so hard like it doesn't have to be so complicated you don't have to like reinvent the genre every time you could just write a book of recipes and she didn't say it in a mean way she meant it as like your recipes are really nice and it can be people will be so happy with that And I was like, absolutely not.

28:18I'll never do that. But it was like once she uttered those words, then it got sort of planted in my head. And like literally one week later, I was cooking something. And I was thinking to myself like, wow, this is a really good, simple dish. If only I could share it with people. If only I had an efficient way to communicate this procedure and ingredients list to people. And so that sort of dawned on me that maybe I did want to do the thing that I had said I would never do. And so I kept that really private. And I didn't tell anyone because normally I tell everybody, like when I have an idea, I call everyone five seconds later.

28:55And I just sort of kept a list of the recipes I would share if I was going to do this. And I realized it was just like the super simple stuff I made at home. But there really wasn't a why yet. And the why sort of came about over time as I realized like my why is to connect, is for connection. And so and that things don't have to be the best or perfect or the most optimized, you know. I was going to say aspirational. Yeah, or aspirational. It can just be something so simple. And so in a way, you know, I was fighting so much of my own like inner critic to put like I would be like, oh, God, this carrot stick thing that I learned from my neighbor is so awesome.

29:42Like she puts rice vinegar and flaky salt on her carrot sticks and the kids love it. And I love it. And I'm like, that's I can't put that in a cookbook, you know, or and then I was like, why not? And so I think every time I overcame my own inner critic and my own personal judgment of myself, it was also in hopes that like showing – basically I'm like maybe if people see me doing less, they'll feel empowered to do less. Like everything doesn't have to be the best. It just needs to be sort of a means for gathering or a means for sharing time. Yeah, this is a very, like, I think, attractive quality to look for in a cookbook.

30:25I think often I look at my cookbooks and I think it looks beautiful, but, you know, when am I going to take the time to make that? And I think to look at a cookbook and see things that you don't have to make the time for, like the time is already there, is really appealing. I was thinking about this Buckminster Fuller quote when I was reading the book, which is a very, like, crunchy thing to say, but it's basically more and more with less and less until you can do everything with nothing. Oh, that's so beautiful. I feel like it speaks to the Bay Area. More and more with less and less until you can do nothing with everything.

30:54I love that. And he was like a whole earth catalog, you know, kind of like new wave thinker. And I think like especially as life gets louder and busier, that's a nice thing to return to. That's so beautiful. I love that. Oh, I'm going to write that down. That's like the title of the next book maybe. I think there might be one out there kind of like that. But I like this kind of idea about a recipe book, a non-recipe book, because even the kinds of recipes in this new book, there's not just one format. There's like a very loose kind. There's a more kind of formalized one. Were you always kind of thinking about playing around with like what is the recipe form actually mean?

31:29I don't know that I was that sort of like clearly making that clear of a conscious decision about it. But it was more that every time I would rub up against my own discomfort with the format of a recipe for a particular type of food, because it wasn't allowing me to communicate the thing that I actually thought was important, then I let myself choose a different format. So, for example, yeah, I would say the vast majority of the recipes in the book follow the traditional list of ingredients, list of steps format. But then there, you know, when it comes to making vegetables, I rarely, you know, I almost always roast or boil or saute them.

32:16So it felt insane in a chapter organized by vegetable to page after page repeat myself, roast this, boil this, roast this, boil this. Preheat the oven. Yeah. So I sort of did a primer at the beginning for all of those. And I listed like how to do which and I sort of gave tips if there were any outlying things. But then as I went into the vegetables, basically each vegetable section becomes a little like guide for how to like choose and shop for and select those ingredients and then a handful of things to do with each. But that's written in the sort of more paragraph, like Joy of Cooking format where the ingredients are bolded in line.

32:58And that's honestly so that the book wouldn't be 45 ,000 pages long. Like that was for like efficiency of space. And then – but also because I think with vegetables, very little of the time are the kinds of specifics and precision that we need in, say, a bread baking recipe necessary. So it just – that worked there. And then I also wanted to communicate like possibility and that I did in the form of these matrices which come throughout that vegetable chapter. And in the dressings chapter, which like it was definitely a choice to have just dressings. But that was because I didn't want to assign a dressing to a particular salad and sort of set you on your way that this is your thing that you always make.

33:45I wanted to show you these things are versatile and you don't have to like blue cheese. If you don't like blue cheese and persimmons the way I do, you can put this dressing on 55 other things. So I gave, you know, a minimum of three suggestions for each dressing to sort of like inspire you and lead you on your way. And then, yeah, I mean, that's about it. There aren't too many other and there are a few sort of narrative recipes. But other than that, the like the vast majority do follow the classical format. Yeah, I really enjoyed all of the matrices in the vegetable chapter. you have like a fall roast vegetable matrix.

34:23There's a summer salad matrix. So there's kind of different formats about that. But I really want to talk about the salad dressings because I think salad dressing does not get enough love. Or a lot of people have like, I have one house dressing that I make for basically everything, but I've tried a couple of the dressings in the book and specifically the lemon poppy seed dressing. So good. It's like fucked up. I have fed it to so many people. It's so good. Why is it so good? I don't know. I mean, there's an amazing restaurant in L.A. called Kismet, and they have a little side, like their to-go place that I love, their roast chicken place is called Kismet Rotisserie.

34:58It's one of my all-time favorite. Like if Kismet Rotisserie was around the corner from my house, I'd eat there every other day, I think. And they have roast chicken and pita and tons of vegetables and dips. And this is their dress. They have, not this, actually, but they have this lemon miso poppy seed dressing that they put on their salads. And I love it so much. And I wrote to them and I said, can I please have your recipe? I will, like, write a love song to you in this thing and, like, share it with the world. Everyone needs to know this. And they were like, thank you so much, but no, you can't have it because we have to publish our own book, which is a great book.

35:31Yeah, is it in their book? It is in their book. I mean, there are versions in their book. And so because they didn't give it to me, then I was – but I was like, I still, like, need this. So I just did my best to reverse engineer it. But like normally in reverse engineering, I would, you know, have the thing right next to me so I could taste as I go and sort of cook toward that. But I live, you know, 400 miles away from Los Angeles. And so I had to do it from taste memory. So I think I did veer off a little. I think mine does taste. It's not exactly the same. And I know for a fact that they don't put celery seed in theirs.

36:10And I put there were just some things. But I think because this like it's creamy. I love that it's creamy, but also it's the miso is like salty and umami. There's so much lemon. There's so much lemon zest. I do think for like maple or agave syrup makes it really nice. But it has just, oh, it's like so mouth. It's like rounded out in your mouth. It's so good. I can taste it right now as we're talking about it. I bought celery seed for this one purpose. I mean, it's a good, you miss it when it's not there. Yeah. Also, I think the aquafaba component is something that you really seem to be like honing in on in this book.

36:44and I feel ashamed to say this because I cook with chickpeas a lot, but I do most of the time just toss out the aquafaba. Oh, I mean, well, now you can. Because what would I make with it? What does like the aquafaba do for the dressing? You know, aquafaba is just the like bean cooking liquid and I prefer to use the chickpeas. Like it's my preferred aquafaba is the one that comes with chickpeas because it's kind of the most neutral in color and in taste. And it's very high in protein having sort of been the liquid of these beans. And it's a great substitute for egg whites or sometimes even whole eggs because it is so high in protein.

37:21And so in that way, like it can thicken a dressing just like an egg can. But it's a non-egg or non-dairy option, which was, you know, I don't have – I did try for a time to be like a part-time vegan. That sort of imploded because I love dairy so much. but I um I also as I get older I find myself my eyes are drawn to rich heavy crusty frizzy yummy crusty yummy all the things that I've always wanted to eat but then there's this other voice inside of me that's like that's gonna hurt your belly like you're just gonna spend the rest of the day in like a digestion coma. And so there's a way that like my older, better self has sort of prevailed or prevailed with this idea and inspiration that I should try and come up with dressings that make salad really enticing for me, but don't feel like they're going to bomb my gut.

38:23And then you basically make like a, I can't remember the word for this. An emulsion? Like a mayonnaise basically. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You essentially just use, I mean, the other thing that has become my number one delight in life is the immersion blender, like the hand blender. And so that's a great tool for sort of starting this, like, basically a non-dairy mayonnaise base with the aquafaba that becomes the creamy base into which you build the dressing. Right. And I would normally not be somebody who would get my immersion blender to make a salad dressing. But I think the salad dressing is truly so worth it.

38:55And then it kind of reframes, like, typically I would buy a can of chickpeas to use the chickpeas. and then maybe... Now I'm like, give me the aquafaba. Right. So what are you doing with all these chickpeas? You're buying like cans of them. I know. I did put that for precisely that reason. I have a whole section in the book of like, what do you do with all these chickpeas? So, I mean, mostly, honestly, I make either hummus and I also like like a chechi soup. So, but, yeah, you can't go wrong with that kind of stuff. Yeah, you have like a crispy chickpea recipe in the book, which I have always been trying to make them and they never get as crispy.

39:26And then I was reading your recipe and it says to sit them out for like two hours. Yeah, I think you let them dry out in the, like, or you could also dry them out in the fridge too. Anywhere where there's like dry air circulating, it helps. And then when you put them in the oven, they've already kind of had that head start. I like that idea. Okay, these are some of my personal revelations. Yeah, this is awesome. I really enjoyed the kind of culinary ritual component of the book. Can you maybe explain like what that is to you and maybe what they look like in practice? Yeah, I mean, honestly, for me, the idea of ritual came out of thinking so much sort of about recipe.

40:00Like I just turned the word recipe over in my head for so long because I felt like I had to justify for myself and for the world why I was writing a book of recipes after writing a whole other book that told you not to use them or that you could cook without them. And so I spent a lot of time just with the idea of a recipe and the word recipe. And one of my favorite sort of like, I guess, descriptions of what a recipe is is from this poet and pie maker named Kate Lebo. And she writes, recipes are rituals that transform. And I loved that. I loved the idea that a recipe is a ritual. And as I sort of like zoomed out and thought about that, I was like, oh, yes, of course, because what's a, you know, rituals are things that we hand down to future generations.

40:51They're things that we take from the people before us. And so our recipes. And it's a thing that sort of grounds us in our life. And as I sort of had spent these several years really re-examining my own life and what I was doing with my life and also how, if in any way, cooking and writing about food could fit into that life, I sort of learned And that one of the reasons I felt so ungrounded and unmoored in my own life was that I didn't have a deep rooting in anything, in any sort of community or in my own life. Yeah, in my own daily life in any meaningful way. And I thought and read a lot about this.

41:39And I think ritual is a way for people to get a sense of meaning. And because often rituals, like I said, are passed down from families or another source for this type of like really grounding rooting ritual is religion. And I don't practice religion. And I also come from a really splintered family. And there's not a lot of that kind of stuff that was passed down to me. So I've been making it all up as I go along my whole life. and so I was like well I guess I have to find a way to create this now for myself so that I do have a sense of meaning in this world that feels so chaotic and huge and I had for a long time wanted to come up with some sort of weekly dinner ritual which is not by any means like an original idea or anything like that but and even in the years past I had tried to sort of start or participate in something like that.

42:41And for a million reasons, including my schedule, or I didn't have a big enough living room with a dining table, or just I didn't know who would come and all my friends have kids and logistics, like it just never happened. And instead, there was this other way that I started having dinner with a group of friends who were not my closest friends, once a week sort of coming out of the pandemic sort of by accident. And we just kept doing it because it felt really nice. And we didn't put a name on it. And it was just a thing like, are you coming back next week? Yeah. And I was like, yeah. And so we had probably been doing it for six or eight months before I realized, oh, I created the thing that I had wanted to create.

43:25It just doesn't look like what I thought it would look like. And I thought it would be on Sundays, but here it is on Tuesdays, now Mondays. I thought it would be at my house. It's not at my house. I thought it would look totally different. I thought it would be a lot more complicated and burdensome and it's not. And so I thought if I had, you know, if it had been up to me, I would have probably invited a totally different list of people. I thought I would be doing everything and none of those things ended up being true. So yeah, sometimes it's nice to not be like the main character and the moment and to be the really fun, like guest star.

43:56Totally. And I think, But because I'm not the main character, I think that actually made, I learned a lot. I learned a lot that I probably wouldn't have learned if I had been, you know, orchestrating it, hosting it, planning it, yeah, and like managing it. And so in this way, it came together in a much more collaborative way. I think yeah and in a much more I think beautiful way because I'm not in charge and like and so yeah and it's it's yeah I don't know it's and I wouldn't have dared because it's at somebody else's house I wouldn't I it never occurred to me to try to like manage it and because that just never became part of the picture I could just show up which was really a gift to me and be able to show up in whatever way you can that week yeah which is not But I'll wait.

44:50Sometimes I do bring the whole meal or most of the meal because I'm testing a recipe or I had some ambition or something. But sometimes I don't make anything. Sometimes, you know, we have a totally cobbled together meal of whatever. Sometimes, you know, other people have invited guests and I just show up. Other times I bring five people. You know, like it's just it's different every week and it's just what it can be, which is really the nicest way to have it. Yeah, when you're writing about it in the book, you're talking about Shabbat and this phrase, castle in time, which I was raised Jewish.

45:24So I like, that's a very familiar thing for me. And I don't do any kind of weekly dinner Friday or not. But thinking about that, I feel like we all are looking for that like castle in time where you're not thinking about the next thing you have to do or who's going to do the dishes or any of those things. Yeah, it is. And it becomes this thing we, it's like a time in the week that we carve out and it becomes like a physical, holy place in a way, just because by nature of giving the time that much priority in our life. And so that, you know, it's really, I've been, I'm pretty much done with my tour.

45:59I've been to like 30 cities and in every city, the audience asks questions and, you know, a lot of them are tongue in cheek and whatever. And they put them on cards and we sort of go through them. And in one of the last cities, somebody was, you know, and a lot of times I think people just write something just to write something. They're not even trying to ask a thoughtful question. They just want you to read it. Yeah. And so somebody wrote like, what is the meaning of life? And the person interviewing me was like, what? Like, that's going in the discard pile. And I said, no, no, you should ask me.

46:27I have a good answer to that. He asked the question. I said, yeah, this is an insane question for someone to write because I don't know the meaning of life. But what I will say is that at the first book event in San Francisco, my entire Monday dinner family came. And the person interviewing me asked a lot of questions. And we talked about Monday dinner a lot. And I read these, like, some of the excerpts in the book about Monday dinner. And it really felt like the heart of that conversation. And it was really beautiful. And it was beautiful to honor the people, you know, in person. And so that night, one of the kids from Monday dinner texted me and said, oh, okay, now I understand.

47:06Monday dinner is the meaning of life. And I was like, yeah, you got it. Like, it was really good. My answer to that maybe seems like a cop-out, but it's not like life is the meaning of life, you know? Yeah. The daily act of everything. Yes, absolutely. Wow. That's like the most special text to receive from a child. It was truly, I like re-texted it back to their parents. They must have been proud. It's so beautiful. Yeah. That's really sweet. When we were talking about ritual, I was just thinking about this other comparison you make with recipes, which is sheet music. And that was such a grounding moment for me, partially because I grew up playing music.

47:42So I know how to read sheet music. But I feel like it's a really good comparison because things get misinterpreted, right? Right. Like maybe not everyone knows what an eighth note is or it's a different key. And everyone like no one plays the same song the same way. The quality of your voice, your instrument, like all make the difference. But the piece is recognizable as what it is. Exactly. And so, you know, I mean, in the first book, I used a jazz metaphor to talk about like jazz musicians are really talented musicians who understand. Right. They're trained in all the classics and all the basics.

48:16They have deep foundational knowledge of music. And then from there, they begin to innovate and improvise. And so it's the same thing with cooking. You have to understand these basic things. And from there, you can learn how to, you understand, oh, these three things together make a chord or these three things together make a sauce, right? Like there's just a way where it's very, it's like a beautiful and easy way to think about it. And I think food and cooking can feel so, even if you don't speak the language of music, which I don't, like there's a way I think we all can understand that metaphor in a way that sometimes cooking feels so huge and abstract because then you think, oh, all these global cuisines and how could they possibly all have anything in common?

49:04And so it felt just like it sort of landed. It made sense to continue with using music as a metaphor because I think people have learned, I think we have all learned to expect the wrong things from recipes. And you think I follow this recipe and I get the same result. But if you go to two concerts or five concerts by your favorite band in a row, they will not play the song the same way each night. Hopefully not. Yeah, hopefully not. Right. Like it's the same. You could even go to the most talented, like, you know, symphony orchestra. And it's still like to the trained ear. It would sound different night after night.

49:47It's not never the same. And that's for a million reasons. And it's not meant to be the same. But we have learned to believe that if it turns out differently, that that's a failure. And I actually think the failure is not being able to attend to the moment because being attentive in the moment to like, are my tomatoes riper today than they were yesterday? Are these eggs fresher, you know, and thus will require a different treatment? Are my lemons more acidic or less acidic? Is the parsley, you know, is this bunch of parsley bigger than the other bunch of parsley? So when they say one bunch of parsley, this turns out to be something completely different.

50:26I think you have to tune in with your senses. And that's the ultimate sort of lesson. That's the ultimate goal. To be present in that kind of way. 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. Prepare your palate.

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54:26That's butcherbox.com slash taste. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. You mentioned a little bit about how you can look at all these global cuisines and wonder if they have anything in common. I feel like reading the book, you honestly seem more drawn to the fact that all these global cuisines have a lot in common. Like your rice chapter has like eight or nine different versions of crispy rice or flavored rice. And I think like today, a lot of people are really interested in innovation and like how to recipe be completely new. And I feel like you almost have the opposite approach, which is like nothing will ever be new.

54:59I'm like there's nothing new under the sun. Like can we make anything new? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I think, of course, I mean, and sometimes I'm so delighted. I don't eat out a ton in restaurants, but sometimes people are like, you got to go to this place. And I go there and I'm like, whoa, that was really cool and different. Like I've never seen anything like that. So of course, like there are great chefs innovating and absolutely it's possible. But I think for like our day-to-day cooking, it's, I don't think that innovation necessarily needs to be the goal. And that's not to say like we can't cook things that are new to us at home.

55:31That's more about curiosity and exploration, I think. Or just, you know, sometimes you're in the – because you're attending to your moment, say, and you don't have a lemon but you have a lime, you do it this way and you realize you like it better, you know. But I've always sort of believed there are like seven recipes in the world. You know, there's like everybody braises stuff. Everybody cooks their beans. Everybody cooks their rice. Everyone has a noodle. Everyone has a dumpling. Like it's – and of course there are all the different like local cultural twists on those things. I love this book, Coconut and Sambal by Lara Lee.

56:10I really have not had any familiarity with Indonesian cooking until cooking from that book. And a few times I've made entire meals from that book, which is not something I do a lot, but it's just everything in that book is so delicious. and you make stuff over and over and over again, you realize like, oh, I understand now like Indonesian food starts with this aromatic base of like ginger, shallot, lemongrass. Like that's their version of sofrito. Now I'm getting it. Like, you know, you start to learn like, but I can understand that's what, this is what we do in Italy. This is what we do in Indonesia.

56:46We may treat it slightly differently. Here you might brown the crap out of it. There you don't. But like they serve the same purpose, which is to create the flavor base. And so I, yeah, just thinking systemically, there are the things that we have to simmer until they're cooked through. There are the things that you, you know, taste good when they're browned on the outside. There's just some like universal truths. And that's exactly it is. Like everywhere you go, you'll find people doing it. Maybe they just have slightly different ways of getting there. Yeah, I think that is really kind of exciting and comforting at the same time.

57:21And you even write about making cardamom ghee and feeling like I invented something new. And then you go online and of course, it's like a cornerstone of Egyptian cooking. I can't remember. I did that recently with something. I was so confident. I was like, this is like the new cronut. Like I am going to be rich off of whatever I did. And then I Googled it. And of course, of course it exists. I mean, that's happened to me so many times. There's a recipe we cut from the book, partly because exactly this. Like I like spent like two summers, two years. I was just making these like turkey meatballs over and over these little like burgers.

57:56And at some point I was like, oh, what do I do with all the zucchini? I'll grate a zucchini into it to keep it moist. And I put like toasted sesame oil and soy sauce and ginger. And it was so good. These like we made these little Korean burgers and ate them with like kimchi. Yum. And I brought them over for Monday dinner. I was like, I have this great thing I've been testing. I've been working on it. It's so good. Everyone's going to love it. It's so good. And we made them. And Sarah was like, oh, this is just like Odolengi's legendary chicken and zucchini meatballs. And I was like, as soon as you said zucchini, I was going to say this.

58:29The flavoring is different. Yeah, but still, I was like, I'm a genius. And then, of course, not a genius. But he probably also didn't invent. I mean, who knows? Yeah, but it was just a very funny or like nobody, nothing new under the sun, man. That's how it goes. I was curious, you did this home cooking podcast with Rishi Keisha Urwe, whose other podcast I'm a big fan of as well, Song Exploder. Do you think listening to audience questions about home cooking kind of shifted what kind of recipe book you wanted to deliver? I don't think so. I think it always helps for me to hear what people are doing, like what people want and need and where they are.

59:10So in that way, I think it informs how I think about cooking and like what kind of information belongs in a recipe because it will serve the audience the best. So I do love having that sort of access to people's. Yeah, I love like knowing about what people are confused about or thinking about or what they want to learn about. And I luckily get to learn that in multiple ways. You know, we have the podcast, but also just like. Real life. Yes. People stop me on the street or they email or whatever. And like there's just a way that information makes its way to me. I do not read recipe comments, but even in the New York Times where I contributed a lot for a long time, like if there were particular comments that kept appearing, like the editors would make sure I knew so that I could adjust or modify a recipe.

1:00:07And then I would always be like, oh, this is the type of thing people need to know. So I do think in that way, having the feedback sort of on a broad scale has made me a better recipe writer. But I don't think it sort of informed the book's content or the direction. I think ultimately like the thing I had to use as my North Star was, is this what I actually make at home? And is this what I actually love? Because there are a lot of times I get really insecure and distracted. And this is a big part of why I don't look at the internet that much anymore. but it's really easy to be like oh this thing's going viral so and so did it that way oh their book looks like that you know I need to be doing that too and truly I'm so insane that I was doing this kind of I would just like pull these type of insecurity moves left and right up to the point we were like shooting the book the day before I was like I saw something and I was like oh my god like I need to reinvent this entire I don't even remember what it was but I do buy a chocolate cheesecake or something like that yeah like I sent it to um I have this wonderful wonderful sort of colleague who's been working with me for over 20 years Lori Ellen Pelicano who has her own she's incredible company she's amazing and she's kind of like the like voice of sanity on my shoulder and so I'd be like Lori Ellen we have to redo everything about whatever and she's like no she was always like is that what you would actually do at home or you're just being affected by some like Instagram meme.

1:01:38And so then I was like, oh, right, right, right. It's not what I actually do at home. And she often would point out like, this doesn't sound like you, you know, in a recipe or on the page. She's like, why are you doing this? This isn't you. Because she knows me. She has just been in my head and in my Google Docs for so long. Yeah. That's such a gift to have somebody. It's a real gift. Grounded in that way. It's a real, real gift. Yeah. Well, I guess I'm curious after writing this book and touring it, like, do you think that this has shifted or impacted your relationship with cooking? Yeah, I mean, I think it's been really lovely to see the, you know, for so long, a book is something that exists in your own head, and that's it, or in my case, in my head and Lori Ellen's head.

1:02:21And so I have all these, I had all these thoughts and ideas about how it might be received and hopes about how it might be received. But then And it actually comes out. And then I get to talk to people who've looked at it and cooked from it and read it. And sometimes I'm surprised by like the things that stick out to them. Like what? And there are just ways where like last week I was in Iowa City and Carmen Maria Machado was like, I don't know. I can't remember if she said that I said it on the page or in another interview, but she was like, you talk about, you know, this idea of coming together as almost like a radical act.

1:02:59act like do you really believe that in this time and age when like things are so dark and activism has to be so firm do you think that this is enough and I was like well I don't think it's enough not at all but I do think and then I sort of sat with it for a minute and we had just been talking about sort of like capitalism and uh I don't know like just billionaires and just darkness and I thought and something about all of that sort of clicked in my head and I was like well you know this thing we're talking about another word for all of the way that the internet works is it's the attention economy right like they want to capture our attention and then monetize it so um it feels like it's free because it feels like we're giving them something without value which is our time and our attention but actually i think the premise of this book for me and the premise of sort of where I have tried to orient my life is giving understanding that my time and attention actually are the most valuable things that I have and being the most valuable things that I have they're the most precious gifts that I have to share with the people that I care about and so actually then by that like logic that then this doing this then like resting back your time and attention from these forces is actually an incredibly subversive thing to do.

1:04:27And so there's just things like that where like, I don't know that I would have connected dots for myself. But in terms of cooking, yeah, I mean, this really is really and truly the stuff I make at home. And so there's a way to like, I also had to sort of change what I thought a cookbook, I had to expand what I thought a cookbook was for and what a book is and what I had to, you know, this is the second time I've made something. So it's just a new experience at that, right? Like I doubled my experience of making something now and it was so different in so many ways. And the first book, I really envisioned that it would be like the classic thing that belongs on everyone's bookshelf next to the joy of cooking and that it would never go out of sort of it would just be timeless.

1:05:17And so I tried to make all of these design decisions in terms of timelessness. And in a way with this book, it's actually the opposite. It's capturing a moment and a time and a period in my life. And I've been aware of that too since I turned in the manuscript because since these are things that I make at home and cook at home, they continue to evolve. So like the preserved lemon paste, which I love so much and I use so much, like I have continued to find a million more uses for it since I turned the manuscript in. And I was always like, oh, man, I wish I could have told people about this. I wish I could have told people about that.

1:05:53But it's just, you know, life goes on. So yeah, it's cool. Yeah, I think that's really beautiful. And maybe the benefit of having made the timeless thing is that now you can make the thing that is a castle in time. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Thank you. I want to play a rapid fire game with you to close. Okay, I'm notoriously bad at these, but yes, I'll try. It's going to be great. Okay. One place you always like to go eat when you come to New York? Ooh, my God, why am I blanking when I always have?

1:06:26I told you I'm not good at this. Oh, you know what? My new place is, my new, like, I always like to go there is Sailor. I love that place. That's great. A favorite cookbook right now that's not one of your own? I mean, truly, I broke a record, but I really love Coconut and Sambal. It's a really good book. I think anyone listening should check it out. Three things that are always in your fridge. Parmesan cheese, film, and ketchup. Does the film go in, like, the butter drawer? I have a weird, really weird, like, eco-European. My kitchen's so tiny, so the fridge is, like, just 24. It's so little.

1:07:10So I have these, like, tiny, weird little things in the door where the film works. Three things that are always in your pantry. Rice, many rices, tahini, and toasted sesame oil. Yeah. Okay. Your go-to breakfast. Oh, man. I was just thinking about this today because I had two fried eggs on pieces of toast and I was like, wow, this is a real switch for me because I do not have a go-to breakfast. I like some days I don't want to eat breakfast. Other days, whatever. And then sometimes I get into ruts. So I'm a real breakfast wild card. Okay, that's fair. Your favorite late night snack. Ooh. Oh, a spoonful of peanut butter with some chocolate chips on it.

1:08:06Your favorite season for cooking? Summer. Your favorite special occasion restaurant in the Bay Area? Oh, I wish I, you know, it's really funny. My favorite special occasion restaurant is one I can never get into because you have to make the reservation system. It's so intense. It's called San Ho Wan. It's so delicious. It's a Korean restaurant. It's so good. You can't pull any strings? I mean, I try not to. Maybe I could. I don't know. I think out of anyone. It's like you have to be there on the moment and do the button. Yeah, I got that. Your favorite farmer's market? Oh, probably in Berkeley there's a Tuesday market.

1:08:45That's long been my favorite market, yeah. Your favorite bookstore? Oh, oh. I truly love them all. Every bookstore that carries your books, yeah. No, anyway, like I truly love bookstores are where I like, you know, I grew up in San Diego, like a real suburban, sort of like a city of suburbs. I didn't have a car. Like, I also didn't have a lot of money. So sometimes like my mom would drop me off at the shopping center while she went around and did stuff, you know. and I would just go into a Barnes and Noble or a bookstore, whatever bookstore was there, and I would just spend hours, like, sitting on the ground reading everything I could possibly read.

1:09:24And even once I became a cook, like, I, you know, I was making, like,$12 an hour, and hardcover books cost$24. So, like, I could not afford new books, but I always wanted to read everything. And so I would go sit in, like, chain bookstores, indie bookstores for hours and read new books. And that was often how I read books. They're like, doesn't this kid know about a library? I mean, I went to libraries too, but like they just have everything like the minute it comes out. Yeah, and it's right in front. You can go and read the back covers. Yeah, nobody cares. Like, no, I mean, also libraries, obviously, but.

1:09:56No, I feel you completely. Okay, a restaurant that you wish you could be a regular at? Ooh, ooh. I mean, oh, God. See, I told you I'm so bad at this. I'm not good. Now I just want to say sailor. I thought you would say Kismet Rotisserie. Oh, my God, Kismet Rotisserie. You're right. See, I'm just forgetting. Or squirrel. Those are my, I like it. Every time I'm in Los Angeles, I go to squirrel like at least once a day. That's fair. Okay, finally, a fictional food scene like from a book or a movie you wish you could eat. The opening scene, the opening like 20 minutes of The Taste of Things is like the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

1:10:34Yeah. I love that. It's so beautiful. Everyone watch it. Watch it now. Go home and watch it. Samin, this has been so fun. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. What a nice talk. Thank you.

1:10:48This 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. Episode portraits by Louise Zergang Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skurzat and Ian Dingham. 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.