717: From Finance to the “Fantastical Promise Land of Food Media” to Hollywood Writers' Room with Ella Quittner

24:04Have you heard that? Yeah, sure. I've not had the pancake. We only had dinner there, but that's... They have these extremely fluffy pancakes that almost look like a slice of wedding cake when they're coming to your table. They're like towering and quivering. And the way they do theirs is actually more like a normal cake. It's like they put – it's like a tapioca flour batter and they put it in a pan and they bake that in the oven. So in a certain sense, it is really a cake. So I stole a lot from the idea of sponge cakes. Yeah. And I used a sugar-stabilized meringue, like a whipped egg white in my – Stop.

24:33That's really interesting. Yeah, which you can do by hand and I encourage you to in the book because I don't think anyone should have a stand mixer out before like 11 a.m. It's too – it's too heavy. You're not warmed up. You might pull muscle in the morning pulling the thing out. It's already on your counter. It's like we're plugging a thing in. We're making a – like that's too much for me. Not right. What about the grains, the mix of the grains and the pancake? How does that work? Yeah. Does that work? So I tested a bunch of different recipes that called for different things, like an Edna Lewis recipe, et cetera.

25:04One that was really interesting that didn't make it into my mother recipe was cornmeal. Yeah. I think Hellbender has like a masa cornmeal pancake in Queens or Brooklyn right now. Yeah, yeah. that people love. And that's a great example because it gets kind of crispy around the outside, but it's very tender inside like a cornbread. I ended up with mostly all-purpose flour and a little bit of whole wheat just for extra body. Yeah, yeah, but mostly AP. It makes it accessible. That's right. You could use cake flour, which I do in my yellow cake. Quinoa you could even use. Buckwheat. Buckwheat. I tested.

25:39Yeah. The thing is about a pancake is it's sucking up so much flavor from the syrup and the butter. And like if you're really trying to treat yourself and using like a great maple and a great butter, you want it to be sort of like a blank slate. Like it can have some body and depth and intrigue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But ultimately you might be doing a disservice to more interesting milled heritage flowers if you're kind of burying them under all that kind of sauce and accoutrement. Why do it? I love that. Let's move on to biscuits. You write that biscuits are just pie dough with a better personality.

26:12Very, very, very cool observation. What did you learn about biscuits while doing the bench testing? Well, they have all the same ingredients as pie dough. Yeah. Did not realize that until you wrote that. I didn't realize it until like 40 tests in when I was like, wait, this is pie dough. It's just a different shape. The goal is the same, right? A very tender, solid carb that is supposed to flake apart and often is eaten with fruit or preserves or something like that. And in fact, the biscuit can top roasted fruit in a cobbler like an upside down pie. Once I realized that, it led me to a trick that bakers have long used in pie dough, which is basically replacing some of the liquid that you're adding in before you make the shape with vodka.

26:53Yeah, I've heard that. For two reasons. One is that alcohol inhibits gluten formation because it's like the layman's way of saying it is basically like just as wet as adding water at the beginning. So bring everything together. but there's actually less water in it. Well, yes, then it leaves. But at the beginning, there's actually less actual H2O, right, in the thing. And so you're having less of what happens when you add water to flour, which is basically like that the proteins that make up a gluten structure start to snap together. So that happens less. And then, yeah, as it's baking, it bakes off which kind of creates more steam right and then you're getting a better rise very very cool let's zoom out and talk about the actual bench testing because you look at the visuals in the book and you read through it and you're like ellis putting in the work it's crazy like i i was i do holiday baking that's about the only time i bake well congratulations it's hard to get through yeah it's hard to get through and i just i am not a baker and i don't really love it all the time.

27:56It's good to know yourself. But like you did these tests, I mean, multi-day, right? Like how much time goes into just one of these chapters? Well, when I used to do it for this column that I wrote, I did it all by myself and it could take you. The thing is, you kind of do have to plan it in a way where you do it all in one day because you need to get a photograph at the end and all of the food starts to die. Exactly. That's the challenge for this book for the ones that were the most labor intensive and required and it seemed like i couldn't do by myself i had help i would hire people to come over and cook with me i had a wonderful person named mia glickman who i think actually worked at little egg at the time um and has worked all over brooklyn and she's a fabulous cook so she would do a ton of stuff and we would kind of work in tandem to help get things out on time it's uh what was the hardest one to do What was most difficult?

28:48Oh, gosh. No one's asked me that. Yeah. They're all sort of vaguely traumatizing in their own way. Hardest were most unpleasant. Were the eggs hard to do? I feel like the eggs might have been difficult. Eggs were difficult but did not hold a candle to one I did many years ago, not in the book, which was hard and soft-boiled eggs. Yeah. Which I baked like – I mean I boiled like 200 eggs for my apartment smelled for literally weeks. The meat ones are the hardest. I would say like chicken maybe because it's just – I have a friend who used to joke that the true point of this bench testing exercise was to determine the exact volume at which a food becomes disgusting.

29:27And for meat, that happens so much earlier in the testing. Whereas for something like jam or whipped cream, you're like, I could have another bite. Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't – it's pretty neutral in the house. With meat, it's like a smell and it's heavy. And also you start to feel really bad. You're like, wait, what about the environment? You're just like surrounded by all this stuff that, yeah. Yeah. It's like opening 10 Amazon packages at once. Did you test in your apartment this whole book? Yes. Wow. And we shot it there. Yeah, I love that part of it. That's cool. I mean, but like testing it and not having like a space, like that's intense.

30:02Yes. And I have an 85 square foot galley kitchen. Yeah. I know the vibe. Yeah. 17 years I had one of those. Yeah. That's the number one thing when people come over to my apartment where they're like, wait you did this in here yeah it's cool it's new york books are special yeah new york books are special you have to get a speed rack did you get one yes yeah yeah i guess like i love seeing speed racks in like home kitchens i think that's like always they can be done artfully you know you don't have to totally you know by the way if you want a speed rack when you're not using it you could turn it into a bar cart oh yeah put like sheet pans on it oh yeah good call kind of a life hack well yeah nice job so i want to talk a little bit of the essay writing because i think this book is cool because you're doing the bench testing and you're doing the very best, but then you kind of like to do these asides.

30:48And there's a really nice essay about your father. You went to Japan together and you went to a restaurant that was like a 90-minute bullet train ride from Tokyo and you found this restaurant that peddled in Italian, Sicilian trottoria cuisine. That's right. But we all know that Japan just sometimes it just hits different. And it's just like a special culture when it comes to just a deep passion for cooking. And you found like the best Italian food you've ever had there. Yes, but in a very unlikely place, right? When you go to Japan, everyone's like, oh, my God, go to Serencon. Go get pizza. Totally.

31:28And it makes total sense because there's such a culture there of mastering a craft. So something like pasta or pizza that requires careful study, you can find it really well done in droves. I went there with the intention not to eat Italian food because I'd just come off of a several week trip traveling through Rome, Florence, Amelia Romana, having all of these lovely nonas and experts and Michelin chefs teach me all these tricks about the absolute best ways to make fresh pasta for the fresh pasta chapter. So I felt like, okay, I'm pretty carbo loaded. I mean, not even just carbs, I'm like pasta'd out.

32:06I'm here for sushi, I'm here for ramen, I'm here for tonkatsu, etc. Also, my father, a big part of his personality is that he went abroad to Tokyo in 1975 for a year. That will stick with you. Yeah. So when I was a kid, he called South Park a manga from Colorado. Like, Foli has claimed for decades that he, like, lightly speaks Japanese. Talks about it all the time. And so when I went there, I knew I was going there for my reporting trip. I invited him to come. I thought it would be so fun. Yeah. And because he's so obsessed with Japanese culture and Japanese food, that was another reason why I was like, we are not going to be eating Italian food here.

32:44We're just going to go so hard on all of his like nostalgic favorites and do food crawls, et cetera. And then, of course, I make us go to this extremely rural and random suburb, not just 90 minutes by bullet train from Tokyo into the country, but then a further 20 minutes on local train. Oh, yeah. Right on. Because I wanted to attend something called the Porktober Fest, which was an Iowa pork-themed sub-festival within a larger annual festival that celebrated an Edo period samurai warrior. So they were cosplaying Iowa? So the main stated purpose of this Shingen Ko festival is to dress up in Edo period garb.

33:27Got it. And basically like reenact play fight like this samurai era fighting and like celebrate the history basically of the guy who sort of established this region. But within it, this guy who I've been following for the better part of a year who I write about in the book as Bacon Jesus, there was a sub festival called Porktoberfest due to local interest in Iowa bacon where there's like a small part of the fairground that is just dedicated to Iowa bacon and various interpretations of pork. Incidentally, they're getting a Costco there soon. Oh, wow. So I wanted to go to that. But by the time I decided that it's in a city called Kofu, which is like a real city.

34:05It's on the train and stuff. There was no housing, affordable housing options left. So I booked us like an Airbnb in this town called Kai 20 minutes away, like whatever. And by the time we get there to the festival, my dad's getting over cold. He's like very sick. I'm starting to get really sick. It's like a total nightmare, right, to be like in the middle of nowhere. There's like we don't have a rental car. Oh, yeah. My dad does not speak Japanese fluently. We're like basically like what are we going to eat for dinner? We find this the only walkable place near our Airbnb was this trotteria. We get there in the vibe.

34:44Sicilian trotteria. Sicilian, yes. That was the translation. Not exactly the menu. And we get there in the vibe. It's like gas station. Yeah. Right. It's like one flickering fluorescent light by the side of like an unlit road, which, by the way, all the roads in Kai have these like coffin width channels beside them. Part of. Oh, it plays a role in the story. Right. Well, part of what this samurai era warrior is famed for is like developing a system for like alleviating the flooding of the region. So they have basically these like little rivers beside all the roads that don't have guardrails or anything.

35:23And it's just like rushing water kind of a few feet below street level. So we go to this trattoria and it's not promising at all. Yeah. Like we've got a weird app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the pasta comes out. It's not really Sicilian style, which I was grateful for. Yeah. It was more like pan Italian, but best pasta I've had in my entire life. like specifically I remember like a tagliatelle that was like maybe green and like a lamb ragu oh yeah just one of those things it's like you know the first time you go to esoti yeah totally like oh oh back in the day yeah I remember that like you know just getting fresh pastas and like a tagliatelle and not like a like a ravioli or anything that's like hand cut like a tagliatelle with like knife cut looser but by the way my big thing that I complain about in the book is that I don't really like fresh pasta because it's never chewy enough for me that's right that is a point of view you have.

36:13I love that. That is my opinion. And so this was perfect, right? The perfect texture, but somehow still so thin. That's the challenge if you make it chewier is to get it really thin. Just a perfect pasta. And I say like, I'm coming back tomorrow. Obviously, you know, we're in a very rural area. So like, I don't speak Japanese. And I had a translator with me on part of the trip, but he wasn't with us at this point. So I said to my dad, like, I'm gonna have to figure out how to come back here tomorrow with a translator and get to the bottom of what's going on here. But of course, I never did. Because as I write about in the book, we go outside and my dad, who another major part of his personality besides having gone abroad to Japan in 1975, is that he's extremely effusive.

36:53Like the way he talks about things is like an orchestra conductor. Like he comes in from Iran and has a sip of water and it's like, ah, it tastes like a milkshake. Like that's his whole vibe. He grabs life by the collar, shakes it and kisses it on the mouth with tongue with tongue and he like obviously loves this meal he's like so high on japan he's like of course we went into this random restaurant by the side of the road with a flickering bulb and it's like the best meal we've ever had and he's like talking so voraciously that he loses his sight of where he's going and bounce and it's like an unlit surface road and tumbles through the air like simone biles off the vault like head first into this kind of water canal.

37:41And I, you know, his like giant leather bound iPhone flip case like flies open and flies into the water and illuminates the dark street and it like lights him up from below because it's like under the rushing water and I just see him like lying face down like a CSI teaser. Oh my lord. Are you like for a moment like dad died and he had a really great last meal? For a full 10 seconds. I wasn't like oh and he had a really great last minute i was like my mom is gonna be so mad at me yeah yeah um and also this is really sad but yes i fully thought he died yeah he's not moving oh the water's like rushing serious business here and i was like oh he hit his neck on the way down like this is terrifying and um then like you know a few seconds passed and then he like emerges from the water like poseidon like screaming in pain and i like hauled him out of the thing and like kind of like army carried him back is that a phrase yeah no army carries like he was like on me and he's like bleeding and it cues this long night where we have to figure out sort of the hospital system he's talking and fine and relatively fine just like he's relatively fine but there's blood gushing down his leg into his sneakers and it's like leaving a trail on the street which i'm also like oh god they're gonna be really mad at us about this like i'm gonna have to come back here tomorrow and like spray this blood away like clean it up yeah it was like a really clean beautiful suburb um and also his like everything that was in his pockets like flew out and has like rushed down the river so he's also very freaked out so but he's and he's like howling in pain like we don't know what's wrong with him but like something's wrong with his leg and he kind of can't walk and we get him back to also to this um airbnb we're staying at which was like a traditional style like beautiful you know you take off your shoes and it's all tatami mats and stuff and i'm like oh my god he's bleeding a lot of the mats everywhere i'm like stay on the porch Oh, my God.

39:36And I called the Airbnb host guy who is like a sweet sort of elderly man who didn't really want anything to do with us. And he was like, yeah, sorry. I don't know. I don't know a hospital. Totally. Yeah. Ooh. So what do you do? I called. This is probably so annoying of me. But first I tried to call the 911 dispatcher, but I was like, I don't speak Japanese. This isn't working. So I called the translator who was so lovely, who I'd been working with the prior week, who brought me to these dueling ramen festivals and helped me interview people and things for the book. And he, like, stayed on the phone with me.

40:15This was, like, late at night also. He, like, stayed on the phone with me and then I called 911 or whatever the version was again. And he, like, explained it to them and they found an English-speaking dispatcher. And then they came and picked us up and then went to the hospital. and he got x-rays and I ultimately put him on a plane. Yeah. And I never got that recipe. You never got the recipe. You'll be back at Kai in your life. I know you will. You know it, right? Because you'll – Book two. This book two and the story will be continued. Glad he's okay. Me too. And I'm glad you figured out the type of pasta you wanted to write about in the book.

40:48Right. Like toothsome is – Silver lightning. I hate that word, but it's like you want spring and you want bounce to it. Yes. And you want to have – It just it's and it seems like it's not just about the cooking technique. It's about the way you make the pasta. Absolutely. It's about doing the exact thing that I'm trying to avoid in the biscuit chapter and the yellow cake chapter, which is I want to form as much gluten as tightly as possible. Yeah. And have these networks that spring up like a fishnet that stay there even when you roll it out. We could go in many directions. And, you know, I don't want to I didn't want to ask you about everything because there's so much more to cover and you need to buy this book.

41:23Thank you. It's truly one of my favorites of the season. And where should we go? Like, I've got this, like, long list of questions. Let's go to potatoes. Because I think potatoes is an interesting, this idea that, you know, potatoes, when you're talking about Thanksgiving potato prep or you're talking about the way that potatoes are, there's never a coalition in a home kitchen, especially with family members. You know, it's masked or some people love roasted. Right. But the big but here is that you end up making this epiphany or this realization that smashed potatoes, roasted smashed potatoes, kind of everyone loves those.

42:02Yeah. There's like something about them. And I think it goes back to like 2010s. The restaurant industry introduced us to smashed potatoes. Yeah. And like the kale salad era. The kale salad era. Exactly. It's like almost like 1B of the kale salad era. Like these trendy dishes. What did you learn about smashing and roasting potatoes? I learned that a few things will get you there, and it's actually a pretty straightforward formula. So anyone can do this at home. You just kind of have to memorize the steps, and you don't even really have to follow a recipe after you learn the technique. Bless you for that.

42:32So one, you're going to boil your potatoes actually before you roast them. And you're not just going to very heavily salt the water. But by the way, you do need to do that. I do two heaping teaspoons per quart, like really, really heavily salted like you would pasta to flavor it because that's going to be the first sort of flavor to penetrate these otherwise quite bland, starchy potatoes. But you're also going to add some baking soda because what that does in this initial boil is it draws out some of that like fleecy interior of the potato so that when you do this next step where you drain them, you're boiling them until they're about, you know, you can pierce them pretty easily with a knife, butter knife.

43:12Yeah. Ooh, nice call. Yeah, not like they should not still be hard at this point. They should be like you could eat them happily. And they're like well flavored from the salt. Drain them completely dry. They shouldn't have any moisture left. And then you're going to really rough them up like the English do with like a Sunday roast potato. In a bowl or in a high sided pan with a bunch of fat. And having added that baking soda to the cooking water makes it so all of the starch from the potato starts to come out and coat it in this like it's almost like you're putting like a North Face fleece on the potato.

43:43Like, yes, it's the craziest thing. Once you try it, you'll be like, OK, that's the easiest hack ever. because then when you roast them in the oven at a high temperature, all of that like fleecy matter is going to crisp up extra. So like, yes, the skin is going to crisp up, and yes, the parts of the potato that are touching hot metal are going to crisp up, but you're also creating almost like, you know when you're at like a baseball game and you get those fries and they have like the double coating? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a little bit like the skirt of a dumpling, that little extra matrixy part.

44:12Well, when they pour the rice starch in with the water. It's like the extra crispy bits that are like, the fleeces are great. I love that. It's perfect. It's like the thing that you don't need but you want so bad. And it's, so it's that. And then the other thing is just also you cannot be crowding your potatoes on a pan. Yep. So when you drop them down, like it's better to do this on two sheet pans than one if you have any spatial concerns or like a cookie sheet and a sheet pan. Because you need to be able to smash them with like a cup measure or a wine bottle or like a mocha hetje. And a tip I learned is that you can use like a piece of parchment or wax paper also in between if you're worried about it sticking, which is nice.

44:53But you need like a circumference of space around each potato. They should not be overlapping or touching because they're going to steam in the oven. So that helps. And then I also have a step in there that's optional, but I call it insurance cheese, where you sprinkle a little cheese over the top of each one just in case. Like an aged cheddar or like a parm or peccari. So I would have to double check. So an aged hard cheese. But honestly, anything that would form a Frico, if you put it in a pan works. Because that's what we're going for. You're just doing a little Frico. You're going Frico. So you're like an aged cheese.

45:25You're going Frico style. Frico, Frico. And I just think this technique with the baking soda is great. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's a really smart way. And man, again, there's so many other recipes to talk about. Two more. What did you learn when kind of camping out at the Wicked Spoon buffet at the Cosmo? I feel like that was a nice little moment that brought you some revelations about the way people eat, the way people eat times three. I actually went to that buffet or I walked by and the security guard was like, that's a good buffet. But you didn't go in? I didn't go in because I was like, I had a couple other meals.

46:05Good places to be. I mean, I'm not judging. It looked cool. But the guard was like, that's the good one. That's a good buffet. That is how it's known on the strip as like the fancy buffet. It might be the most expensive buffet. And I believe it's also known as the one where they first started doing individually portioned like little bites, you know, instead of just giant tureens of stuff. Now a lot of them do this in post-COVID. But my brother-in-law, who's a buffet aficionado who I talk about in the book, I think, told me that that's, you know, where you first started seeing, like, the bat mitzvah treatment of, like, a soup dumpling spoon with, like, a little, like, vol-a-va in it.

46:41Yeah, yeah. So you just, like, pull the small little bite in as opposed to it being, like, a massive portion. Which is fancier in buffet culture because it requires more, like, labor to put together versus, like, we all know family style. Yeah, but less food waste, too, you'd imagine. Huh. That's a good question for someone to investigate. I don't know. Like when I cook that way at home, it's probably more of a cook family style. But what did you learn? What did I learn? So I went into these buffets. I spent a few days at the last remaining Las Vegas buffets to survive the pandemic and to survive the food court era.

47:10Thinking I had this thesis around this idea of that Americans were going to these places because they love value. And so my brother-in-law, Ray, the buffet aficionado, had been giving me for years this like really intense lessons on how to extract the most value out of a Las Vegas buffet because he'd been going like multiple times a year since he was a child. And it's like, you know, you can hear this. You could see this on Reddit. You could talk to anyone who loves a buffet about this. There's very much a strategy where it's like, you know, you want to start with the crab legs and do at least two plates of crab legs because that's like the highest ticket value.

47:42Before the salad, before the appetizers you hit in crab? You're not supposed to hit the salad, Matt. Sorry if I'm the one to tell you that. But yeah, that's what Ray calls filler. He calls stuff like salad, the big thing of like white rice near the dim sum section. Oh, yeah. You can't do that. Pack and cheese, grandma's meatballs. That's filler and you're not to touch. You're to go crab leg to shrimp cocktail. And he says you could tell which buffets are nicer because they pre-peel the shrimp. If there's caviar, you're to do that. And then you're to move on to the premium meat. So he says don't even look at like a brisket, a pot roast.

48:14But you want like a tenderloin, right? You want something that's like a wagyu if they have it. And so he has this whole order that ends with several flavors of gelato, but obviously the more expensive ones like pistachio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rare nut gelatos. Right. You're not going like pedestrian. No, you're doing like$11.99 per kg ingredient. And so I thought I was going to do this story about how Americans like value and how, of course, it's not uniquely American as a cultural thing to seek out the best value. But we have a very unique flavor of it, right? Like my grandfather's life motto was free is free.

48:47Like it's we have the flavor of it. My motto is free tastes better. That's what I always say. Are you my grandpa? I mean maybe spiritually. And I went there thinking that and then I spent all these days watching what actually happened in these buffets. And in practice very few people behaved like Ray and it was total chaos. It was like, you know, like a grown woman on her Bluetooth. Like where does she even still have that from walking by with like a full plate of just like all like all mac and cheese with like one sushi roll on top. Right. It's like entire plate. All the only thing on is a chicken wing.

49:22It's like a man taking a Zoom call from the table, like not even eating. It's just paying to be there. Just to be in the space. Having a bottle of champagne. Do you think that there's people like watching the cameras behind glass or like look at the lady with all the rice and all the mac and cheese with only the sushi is like we got one. For sure. We got one. and there's like dollar signs of the AI above each head. Yes, absolutely. I think it's like that's extremely the vibe. Yeah, yeah. And also, by the way, those same people are watching you and timing you to like kick you out when you reach your limit.

49:51Usually it's like a 90-minute limit or something. Wait, are you really? Do you get like bracelets with color codes or something? No, people are. You think you've – there's like this illusion of freedom where they're like, all right, well, enjoy. But if you overstay or welcome, someone will come over and bring you your check and be like, well, it's a good one. Wait, stop. Like with a headpiece on, your piece will come in and say it's time to go. Yeah. Like similar to like, you know, if you were counting cards or something. Wait, is there like there's no all-you-can-eat framing with this place? It is.

50:18It's within a time limit. Okay, that's the asterisk behind it. But there used to be this thing, I think it's now defunct since the pandemic, called the Buffet of Buffets Pass, where it was like a pass you paid some dollar amount to be able to hit every buffet. So while the time limit may still have applied, I feel like you could go out and go back in. It's like the apex ski pass for buffets. Exactly. You go all the way at buffets. Exactly. Oh, my Lord. My dream is that it comes back, and I can do that as another story. But so I went in with this thesis about value, and I thought that's what I'd be observing.

50:47And then I observed complete chaos and, you know. Yeah. And I think what I landed on is that buffets aren't actually about value, but they're about the illusion of choice, which is something that is very hard to come by in America. Yeah. Let's close and talk about the chocolate chip cookie. You write that it is charted territory and very much I agree. But you still include it. You still include it. I do. But I don't want to talk about chocolate chip cookies. Okay. Beautiful image, great for marketing. I want to talk about yellow cake. Yeah. You really went hard and deep with yellow cake and I applaud you.

51:23I think it's underrated. Why pick that? A perfect plush yellow cake with a salty, dark chocolate, super fudgy, super silky buttercream and like a crazy amount, crazy ratio is my favorite food. Like I could eat that six times a day. And I know that there are people out there who think classic cakes and layer cakes are boring and I think they haven't had a good one. I think anyone who truly loves food and eating will eventually find that they love layer cake and they just have to find the right combination. one of my favorite foods of all time obviously my favorite dessert so I went into that one just so excited to eat layer cake because I was like ultimately unlike some of these tests like shrimp I will want to eat everything that comes out of this like every single one will be pleasing to me and it was um like just the idea of like several layers of very soft richly flavored fluffy but still sort of like dense and velvety cake swaddled by like a silky french chocolate But buttercream just gets me going.

52:25Yeah, that's a great company. Like I'm going to go home and do that test again. Like I don't even have to. Yeah, the book is written. Right. And the book, I mean, it's in the Amazon warehouse. But you still want to test more. I just want to like eat it. So that's why I did that one. I think practically speaking, it's like a little black dress for people to have a good yellow cake in their repertoire. And since finishing the book, I would say that's one of my recipes I turn to the most because it's so easy to like doctor and manipulate a yellow cake recipe or just use a very good, very flavorful yellow cake recipe as a base and do like all sorts of fun frostings and fillings.

53:01So you can basically turn it into anything. It's like an extremely versatile recipe. Really, really, really cool. Well, you'll come back, right? Because we're not going to do a taste check because we're running a little long. You'll come back and talk about more recipes? Whenever you want. I want to talk about writing in Hollywood. You were staffed in a writer's room for a fantasy show. Yes, that's right. But you also are a screenwriter and you have some projects that are taking out, some involving food media. Tell me about what is the fantasy show? You were in this room. What were you kind of chopping up there?

53:31Yeah, so I split my time between food writing, journalism, screenwriting, and fiction. And I've been working in TV and film for maybe the last four or five years. And the last show I worked on was, I'm so excited about it. I loved it so much. I'm trying to think. What I can say about it is what's public, which is it's called Rise of the Empress. Yeah. Empress? Yes. Great. And it was an epic fantasy. And I had the absolute best time getting to write on it. Yeah. Just the most wonderful experience. And now that I'm back, I'm working on a couple of features and also working on a pitch for a food show, which is basically a really fun, slightly soapy, super propulsive restaurant show set in New York.

54:15That's all about kind of the front of house. Interesting. So there's that other one that's a little more back of house. Yeah, that other one you may have heard of. Yeah, we're not talking about it anymore. We're done. But the front of house is a great way to frame drama. Is there a lot of sex? For sure. It has to be, right? Yeah. Yeah, think like industry vibe, gossip girl vibe, but for like, you know, the idea that the person that is actually the most powerful in the restaurant industry is like the hot shit maitre d' that owns the list and can make your opening matter. I'm going to leave it there because maybe when you come back, you can tell me more about that show being sold and the production of it and all that.

54:53Let's fingers crossed for that. Thank you. Thanks for manifesting that, Matt. Yeah, well, I try to do that here. But Ella, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Thank you for having me. I had the best time.

55:09This Is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy. Logo design by Ellie Skirzat 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.