736: Hello Home Cooking with Ham El-Waylly

14:45Matt:And I feel like a lot of cultures have this idea of like hand taste is one of the translations I've heard for this, that like the person making the food is imbuing this essence into it. And that even if someone makes it exactly the same, like it will taste kind of different because of just the physical matter of who that person is. And I think the older I get and the more that I have people's food, the more I kind of believe in that kind of like hand taste quality.

15:08Ham El-Waylly:I completely, completely agree. I think that when you're making something and you're really focused on it and you're really, really dialed into it with the intention of serving it to other people with love and care, you are putting a piece of yourself into it. And it's a big part of cooking, of the joy of cooking, of putting yourself into this thing and seeing other people experience it.

15:34Matt:Totally.

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18:11Matt:talk about the development process for the book because you have so many different kinds of recipes at play. How did you kind of approach nailing down what recipes would be in the book and then kind of fleshing them out, making sure they all worked?

18:23Ham El-Waylly:Well, everyone told me when I started working on this book is do not do it in order. Do not like don't think of a chapter and then fill that chapter. And that was the best advice that I got. So I didn't approach it that way. I just thought of I looked at old family pictures to kind of get into the headspace of young ham and the things that I grew up eating and more importantly, how I felt eating them. So there are a lot of things that I just wish I could eat again. And so I started with that. So I just made things like my mom's cheese empanadas. Those are like a very clear memory for me because I knew that my mom always made them when she was missing home and like wanted a piece of home.

19:09Ham El-Waylly:and she was always really excited to share it with us because even though her family couldn't be there with her, we were her family. So it was nice to share that piece of her with us. And moments like that really stick out to me because yes, it's a really good cheese empanada, but it's that moment of sitting on the kitchen table with my mom and my sister, biting into a cheese empanada that you can't really experience that memory entirely again, just because that time has passed. But I can experience a snippet of it by recreating this cheese empanada. So I started with that. And then once that dam had been broken, it just rolled on from there.

19:56Matt:And then you also have some recipes that were your mom's recipes in the book that came from the Madonna notebook, which I loved hearing about. Can you say more about that?

20:06Ham El-Waylly:Yeah, so my mom loved collecting recipes from her community, from newspapers, just wherever she found an interesting recipe, she'd always either write it down or take a clipping and put it somewhere safe. So she would write it down everywhere, but only a handful of recipes made it into this Madonna notebook that she had. So it's blue lined on the inside. And then the cover is Madonna singing in red lingerie in like colored in with watercolor. So it is.

20:38Matt:I just have to say when I first was reading about it in the book, I thought you meant like the blessed Madonna, like the mother of Jesus Christ. Oh, not Madonna. When I realized that it was Madonna, the blessed pop superstar. I just I really want to hang out with your mom. Yeah, she loved Madonna. Did she watercolor it herself?

20:55Ham El-Waylly:No, no, she bought it like that. And the spine had started to give out. So she just got electric tape. And then you just saw layers of electric tape on the spine because that electric tape would eventually wear out. And she just put a new one on top and a new one on top. So it's probably one of my most prized possessions because it was when we moved from Doha, it happened really suddenly. So we didn't get a chance to get a lot of our belongings. Like, I don't know where most of those childhood things are. So I'm really grateful to have to have that piece of like my personal family history. And it was something that I was scared to open for the longest time because I personally wasn't wasn't ready to deal with the flood of emotions I knew would would sweep over me when I started flipping through that book.

21:51Ham El-Waylly:and during the pandemic, that was the first time I actually sat down, opened the book, started flipping through it, started reading it all and it was, first thing I noticed was there are three languages in it because my mom spoke three languages. So it was really difficult for me to decipher because she would hop from English to Portuguese to Spanish in the span of just a few pages. So I started reading through the English ones first, then the Spanish ones, the two that I'm most comfortable with. And then I just sat there with reading the Portuguese ones and then looking up the words I didn't know.

22:30Ham El-Waylly:And that kind of got the ball rolling for the book, just opening that and reliving those memories kind of really brought me mentally to a place I hadn't been in a very long time.

22:46Matt:I can see that being really impactful. And I believe there are two recipes in the dessert section that you just kind of published as is. Did you think about kind of modifying them or making any adjustments?

22:58Ham El-Waylly:I didn't want to. I wanted it's those recipes are from a completely different time where where social did not matter. It was just based on what is easy, what will make a delicious cake with ingredients that are affordable and that you can easily find, which is kind of the premise of the whole book. So I wanted to give a snippet, almost like you open up this time capsule that had just been sitting there forever that you'd forgotten about. And I wanted to give people the option to experience what my mom considered good recipes. Because she would always label recipes she really liked with just a good and two underlines.

23:40Ham El-Waylly:Just to kind of remember that, okay, this one's really good. So for a special occasion, let's go straight to this one. So I picked my two favorite good recipes. And those are the ones I put in the book.

23:52Matt:What are the two good recipes?

23:54Ham El-Waylly:It's a banana bread and a lemon loaf cake.

23:57Matt:Classics.

23:58Ham El-Waylly:Classics, like delicious, delicious classics that I look forward to having anytime I saw them on our kitchen table.

24:05Matt:Okay. I love hearing about the kind of early stages of the book. I'm curious if there was a section or maybe even a recipe that was kind of the hardest one to perfect that made it in.

24:16Ham El-Waylly:The hardest recipe to perfect was the Beijingo Swiss roll. Not because the actual recipe was difficult to develop. The experience and feeling I wanted people to get when they took their first bite was the hardest thing to get. So beijinho is a very – it means something very, very specific to me. It means a Brazilian gathering or a celebration where people are happy. They're probably grilling a lot of meat. There's like pots of feijão on the stove. there's farofa in bowls like it it's a very specific setting it like brings me to a very specific time and place and so beijinhos are are a kind of truffle so a lot of people are familiar with brigadeiros which is like the the chocolate truffle where it's like condensed milk cooked down with some cocoa and then you roll it in chocolate sprinkles very delicious a lot easier to find these days and like 10 years ago.

25:23Ham El-Waylly:Beginio is the kind of ignored cousin to the Brigadero. So the Beginio, which I always preferred personally, is there are also balls of like this condensed milk fudge without any chocolate, but they're rolled in coconut and then they have a clove stuck into them. And the clove kind of perfumes the whole thing. There are times where I ate it hole and forgot about it. Well, you, you pull out the clove before you eat it, but sometimes the tip of the clove breaks off into the center, ruins your day. It's the worst. It's the worst. Ruins your day. So I wanted the experience of eating that Swiss roll to feel like that first beijinho that you bite into.

26:05Ham El-Waylly:And then the first time, um, the first time we got it, it really, it transported me immediately. And then I knew, I knew we had nailed it. And it, and it's, it, because of that, is one of my favorite recipes in the book.

26:17Matt:Oh, I love that. Something I realized when I was looking at the recipes in your book is that I should be cooking with tea at home. I drink so much tea and I basically never cook with it. And you have like a broccoli chamomile soup. How did you even come up with that? It's such a genius idea.

26:33Ham El-Waylly:That's a, there's a lot of, there's a lot of flavor combinations that I've, that are rooted in tradition and things I grew up eating, but there are also a lot of fun flavor combinations that I've learned in fine dining kitchens. That one specifically comes from WD-50. They paired tea with zucchini. And I thought that just the floral notes from both, like you don't really think of zucchini as floral, but when you get really nice, fresh farmer's market zucchini and you pair it with something like chamomile, it brings up qualities that you didn't think a vegetable had. So that's why I really, I started experimenting with teas and other vegetables.

27:14Ham El-Waylly:So I love cooking down green vegetables, specifically in tea, that I feel like it brings out a lot of really fun notes that you wouldn't have otherwise. And beans, beans are fantastic cooked in tea because it helps add this other tannic depth of flavor that goes really well with like how medium bean can be, mushroom as well. I can just go on for like most things with the right kind of tea is only made better.

27:42Matt:Yeah, what tea should I be using for my beans?

27:45Ham El-Waylly:So beans, I really like a hojicha type deal because I like that nutty kind of undertone that hojicha tends to have. Hojicha and beans is such a great combo.

27:58Matt:You know, I think I was eating dinner at your house one time and you served rice that had been cooked in barley tea. Yes. And that was throwing me for a loop when I was eating it because I knew it wasn't barley, but it had that kind of like nutty whole grain flavor with it.

28:11Ham El-Waylly:Yeah, I love the Korean barley tea is something I always have in my fridge. It's one of my favorite things to drink. It's refreshing, but tasty at the same time. It's tough. A lot of the things that are really tasty to drink doesn't really quench your thirst. You know what I mean? So it's really nice to find something like a barley tea that has a lot of flavor, but also quenches your thirst. I love using that to cook in general. It's great for braising meats. It's great for also beans. It's great for mushroom. But rice, it's like exactly like you said. I love cooking rice in it because it makes it taste like barley, but you get the texture of rice.

28:52Ham El-Waylly:So it's like a nice, it's a nice combo.

28:54Matt:I'm glad you mentioned beans because your bean technique, which is just like a quick aside in the book, totally threw me for a loop because I cook beans at home probably once a week. And I always am doing that thing where you're simmering the beans with like every aromatic, delicious thing in the fridge or the pantry to try to get that flavor in there. And what you write about doing is just cooking the beans with a bay leaf and salt and then frying off some onion and garlic and then mashing up a little bit of the cooked beans and adding that all back in at the end. And the idea of just adding my like delicious golden sauteed aromatics at the end so that more of the flavor would be there is so smart.

29:30Matt:And I was like, how have I never thought about this before? Like it made me upset because I thought about all of the times I've been trying to make garlicky beans and I just haven't gotten it to where I needed to do that.

29:39Ham El-Waylly:That is classic, classic Brazilian household cooking. That's how they make their beans. That's how I watched my mom make beans thousands, thousands of times. And it's still, I've played around with so many different kinds of beans and bean methods and bean seasonings. But the one that I always go back to is that there's something about, well, it's similar to like tatka or chank or like a lot of other cultures do similar things where you frizzle something and then you finish, finish it, finish whatever you're cooking with it. It just brings a vibrancy of flavor that often gets lost when things are simmered together for a long time.

30:17Ham El-Waylly:So I really want that punchy garlic. I want that frizzled onion. You want all those flavors front and center. So that's the best way to add that. And I love the – I like a thick stewy bean. Me too. So like mashing up the beans and like you don't need to over-reduce. You don't need to add really thickeners. Like beans are the thickener. So I love it when – I like it when beans kind of burst and their insides thicken the broth as like – I'm not the biggest fan of like a brothy whole bean situation. Like I want my beans burst. I want my bean sauce thick. And that's I feel like a very consistent way to get there.

30:57Matt:I think I want my bean sauce thick would be a really good graphic option for you.

31:02Ham El-Waylly:I like that.

31:03Matt:I can see it now. Another kind of lesson that I took away that was surprising to me is that you write about only using like one knife at a time. And I think when a lot of people think about, you know, great chefs, they have like the knife roll that has like so many things going on in it. So what's your go-to knife right now and why is that kind of your tried and true?

31:23Ham El-Waylly:I've been using the same knife for a few years now. It was a knife I always wanted when I was a line cook, but I was just priced out. It was too expensive. So there was a point where I could finally get it. It's the Ninox G-Type. Ninox is this very boutique Japanese knife maker. They make beautiful, beautiful knives. Their blades are perfectly balanced. It's a very high-quality carbon steel that I believe they set and mold under sub-zero temperatures. I don't know the science behind it, but it's like their trademark technique. So no one else makes knives like they do. And their signature is they have a lot of crazy handles.

32:10Ham El-Waylly:And then that's what really skyrockets the price of the knife. So the blade will be the same. But they'll have handles out of like white buffalo horn. Or like they have insane handles that go up to like thousands of dollars. I did not get a fancy handle. So I just got their lower end, the cheapest G-type that I could find with just like a regular handle. But it's just as soon as I started cutting with it, I couldn't really use any other knife. It just felt perfect in my hand. The weight was really perfect. I like a nice thin blade on my knife so that I can see my cuts. That's something a little bit more specific to like a Japanese-style Western knife.

32:53Ham El-Waylly:A lot of the Western knives have thicker, thicker hulls and they kind of have a curve at the base of the knife for that rocking motion.

33:02Matt:Yeah.

33:03Ham El-Waylly:I don't, I'm not a rocker. I don't, I don't like to rock my, I don't really rock my knife when I cut. I do more of a, more of a Japanese style slice. So the, the knife not only fits, fits perfectly in my hand, but how it's formed works for how I like to cut. So that's an important thing to think about when you're picking out a knife. Like if you are – first off, if you're going to go for a higher-end knife, you have to also make sure that you're comfortable sharpening your own knives on a whetstone because those go hand-in-hand. Like it doesn't matter how fancy your knife is. It's going to eventually get dull and you need to know how to sharpen it.

33:39Matt:Especially if it's the only knife that you're using. Especially. So you don't think you need like a serrated blade or anything else. You just use the one.

33:47Ham El-Waylly:um okay occasionally if it's if it's like a really tough or like really crusty piece of bread i'll reach a serrated but if it's i'm just cutting regular bed bread i'm just using using that one knife it's you can do everything with it there's there's i have other knives obviously that i'll like if i'm feeling like a fancy boy and i'm breaking down a chicken i'll grab i'll grab my um my honosuke, which is like a poultry knife. But most of the time, if I'm just cooking at home for myself, for fun, I'm just using that one knife. It's hard to part ways with it. It just feels so good.

34:26Matt:Yeah. I mean, I don't even have one that's that nice, but I similarly feel like the chef's knife, if you just use it for everything, then I know how it works. I feel more comfortable using that than something else.

34:35Ham El-Waylly:Exactly. Yeah.

34:36Matt:Do you watch Culinary Class Wars? I don't.

34:39Ham El-Waylly:You're maybe the second or third person to bring it up to me.

34:42Matt:Oh, you do have you and Sola should definitely watch it because they just are incredible chefs and the ideas that they have and just like the things that like the skill, the technique, like the challenges. I don't want to talk to you about it right now because I think you should watch it and we can geek out about it. But there's one of the chefs in the new season who's an incredible Chinese cuisine specialty chef. And she's just using her one like classic big ass cleaver for everything. Oh, for everything? For like the most detailed, like intricate. She's so cool. They have like nicknames that some of the chefs go by.

35:15Matt:And then they're not allowed to use their real name unless they win the competition.

35:19Ham El-Waylly:Oh, is it a scripted show? No, it's like a competition show. Oh, okay.

35:24Matt:I guess I'll tell you like a very quick spark note. But I'm like totally derailing the conversation. But they have two tiers of like really famous Korean chefs. And one of them are like the white spoon chefs who are Michelin star, like, you know, top dogs. And then they have the black spoon chefs who maybe they have their own restaurant. Maybe they are like the CDC at one of the Michelin spots, but they are not quite like at that level. And they compete against each other. That sounds amazing. And one of the black spoon chefs who is using a nickname because she can't use her real name yet. Her nickname is Witch with a Walk because she does Korean cuisine.

35:56Matt:And everything with this cleaver, I'm kind of like, damn, maybe I need to learn how to use a cleaver.

36:01Ham El-Waylly:It is amazing when you walk down Chinatown and see how good people can get with what looks like this big, heavy, unwieldy cleaver. But you can do so – you can, like, flatten dumplings. You can slice scallops. Like, you can do so much, which is, like, if you – whatever tool you have, if you're comfortable with it and practice enough with it, you can excel.

36:24Matt:Totally. I think that is the real takeaway. And I think that's the benefit of getting to think about home cooking is that hopefully these are things that people will make over and over again and just get better and better at executing the recipe.

36:35Ham El-Waylly:Exactly.

36:36Matt:I'm curious when you were thinking about developing a home cooking book or maybe just when you were doing more cooking at home, were there any fine dining lessons that you kind of brought into that arena?

36:46Ham El-Waylly:Yeah, I think there's it's there are definitely a lot of things to learn from the fine dining world. A lot of it has to do with your organization. Like how can you make your life easier as you're cooking? Everyone by this point has talked about like mise en place to death. So it's not necessarily just that. The thing that I took away from fine dining is knowing what the limits to things like fat and salt and even things like color. Like what sear means to me. I learned this after starting to develop recipes for home cooks. What a sear means to me, a lot of people do not think is a sear. Like to them, it would feel burnt.

37:33Matt:Yeah.

37:34Ham El-Waylly:Because people are so scared of burning their food that I feel like they under sear a lot of things. They don't get their pan hot enough or they're using a nonstick pan. Or it's like you can get things really, really nice and dark to get the maximum amount of flavor out of them. Like things like brassicas, like cabbage, broccoli, a little bit of char on them is not a bad thing. You're activating all these kinds of sugars that are adding other layers of flavor. When you're cooking a steak, people will just get like lightly golden brown with some patches of nothing and then stop. It's like you can develop a really thick crust.

38:12Ham El-Waylly:And it's not just about texture. It's about flavor at that point as well. Which is why I like to flip my steaks because I'm developing layers and layers and layers of my yard on the steak, which is just going to punch up the flavor a lot. And it's like steak's expensive. Like you want to get the most out of these things. And that's like a big part of it. It's like you can – you spent money on these things. Don't you want to get the most out of them?

38:39Matt:Totally. And I think that's the benefit of having photos alongside the recipes, right? As you can see, this is the indicator that you're looking for. And the photos in the book are so beautiful. And I love how every section has the title page that has a grid with like the photo for every recipe. It's almost like, I hate to say it's like looking at an Instagram feed because it's obviously so much better. But it does have that feeling of like when you look at like the New York Times cooking feed and you wonder like which dish do I want to click into to make. What was the kind of vision you had for the way the photos would exist in the book?

39:10Ham El-Waylly:Well, that was definitely a combo of Laura Murray, Chris Cristiano. The great Laura Murray. The greatest Laura Murray. The great Chris Cristiano.

39:17Matt:These are my old Bon Appetit co-workers. Your old Bon Appetit and Sola.

39:21Ham El-Waylly:All the way. It was the four of us just in our tiny apartment, just banging it out. I got to say, I was really happy with how the grid shot, the chapter openers worked out, because that was so hard. That was so difficult. Like you don't really think about it because it's just across two pages and then you just flip. You'll be like, oh, that's really cool. These are all the dishes in the chapter. But that was essentially an entire other photo shoot. We had to shoot every dish twice because we had to shoot it for the beauty, for the actual book in the chapter. And then we had to replay it, take that dish, and a lot of the times restructure it so it would look better as like a solo thing.

40:05Ham El-Waylly:And then in our backyard, Laura and Chris set up this big, almost like a green screen setup, but with different colors, which represented the chapters. And then we'd plate and then we'd place the dish there and then she'd shoot the photo. So it was we were pretty much shooting, plating, doing everything twice. And we fit that all in probably like eight days. like it was there were multiple points where we're all looking at each other and asking each other is this going to be worth it are we and are we going to end up putting this in the book or or not but it it i'm really happy with how it showed out and showed out how it came out and it was

40:45Matt:definitely definitely worth it i mean that's so much more work than i thought it would have been but i do think it paid off i think as a reader it is such a satisfying way to look at things and And honestly, it would be a great poster or a periodic table of recipes or something.

41:00Ham El-Waylly:Oh, that is a good idea. You're full of good merch ideas. I know.

41:02Matt:I'm giving you a lot more work to do. Chris is listening to this being like, please stop.

41:06Ham El-Waylly:Please stop. We don't need more.

41:09Matt:No more design ideas. Well, I want to talk a little bit before we close about the book promo. And you've been doing these videos on Instagram that are so unhinged in the best possible way. What is like your director hat on like vision for these videos?

41:26Ham El-Waylly:I so whenever you're about to sell a book, everyone tells you this same spiel. Like you need to you need to make X amount of recipe videos with these recipes. You need to go on these morning shows. You need to go like there. There's this this planned list of things that they tell every author to do.

41:49Matt:You need to go on the taste podcast.

41:50Ham El-Waylly:You need to go on the case podcast. And it's like, yes, I'll do those things. But the cookbook market right now is extremely competitive. It's really saturated. There's like something I think Clarkson Potter bought like 50 cookbooks over the summer. So that that's a lot of things that you're competing with. So I wanted to do something that was different, that was going to stand out. And I didn't know what was going to work or not. So my North Star is, do I find this funny? Is this fun for me to make? Am I having fun doing this? And the first one of those, it's called The Publisher. One of my favorite shows of all time is the original BBC Office by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

42:41Ham El-Waylly:And I know that show by heart, top to bottom, including Christmas specials. And I had always wanted to do my version of David Brent. It was something I had like it's been sitting in the back of my mind for years. Like since I first saw that show, it's like I can do a version of this character that I think will be very funny. And so I knew that's where I wanted to start. And then we just got a little bit more unhinged from there. Like Solo is a huge I Love Lucy fan. We watched a lot of it together. And then she wanted to reference that gag that we ended up doing in the second episode of the cakes getting progressively larger.

43:25Ham El-Waylly:and that I thought was a really, really fun gag as well. And it's like what I'm doing right now is I don't know what will work, but no one else does either. So I'm down to try whatever as long as I find it fun, I'm having fun doing it. So that's like, if maybe people have fun with me, they'll be like, oh, this guy's funny. Let's see what he's done. He's got a cookbook. Let's check it out. Let's buy it. So it's about trying different, different marketing approaches.

43:56Matt:Totally. And you know that everyone's going to hopefully, you know, go on similar podcasts, like do similar interviews, but nobody else is shooting like British accent, like scripted skit videos to promote their book. As far as I've seen.

44:09Ham El-Waylly:Exactly. I believe it's the first one. You could be starting a trend with this, actually. Hey, maybe. I'd love to see more skit-based cookbook promotion.

44:18Matt:That's what the people have been asking for. More wigs, more accents, more I Love Lucy style gags. Exactly. Okay, well, we're manifesting that.

44:26Paula Houde:This episode is brought to you by Rula. I've always been bothered about the way we talk about healthcare. You break your arm, you use your insurance. You get a weird mole checked out, you use your insurance. But the moment someone needs to talk to a therapist, suddenly it's all out of pocket. That's a double standard we've all just accepted. And we really shouldn't. Rula is a healthcare company built to close that gap. Over 15 ,000 licensed therapists and psychiatrists nationwide match to you specifically, your goals, your background, your needs. They work with over 100 insurance plans and the average copay is$15 a session.

45:05Paula Houde:Visit rula.com slash taste to get started. That's r-u-l-a dot com slash taste. You deserve mental health care that works for you, not against your budget. Please support our show and let them know we sent you.

45:19Matt:But what I wanted to tell you is that my daughter is a very good study. Semester, laptop, books, software, hand, internet. So a master is really expensive.

45:27Ham El-Waylly:Oh, tell her, she can get it back.

45:29Matt:You mean from the tax? But she doesn't pay.

45:32Ham El-Waylly:No, the curse word, a divorce. She does it very simple with Visa Steuer. And if she works, it's kaching.

45:39Paula Houde:That's it?

45:40Ham El-Waylly:Safe.

45:41Matt:Visa Steuer.

45:42Paula Houde:Get back your money.

45:43Matt:Now, try it out. else will be in. And to close today, I want to play a rapid fire game with you. So I'm going to ask you to play some favorites.

45:50Ham El-Waylly:Okay, let's do it.

45:52Matt:Okay. Your favorite cookbook right now?

45:54Ham El-Waylly:Lugma by Nurmarad. Such a good one.

45:57Matt:Your most used kitchen tool that's not a knife?

46:00Ham El-Waylly:It's got to be a fish spatula.

46:02Matt:Why the fish spatula?

46:04Ham El-Waylly:It's great for searing, for flipping, for pancakes. It's got this tapered edge that makes it very easy to slide under things. So it's just a great tool to just, I mostly cook on our griddle and it's just the perfect tool for that.

46:20Matt:Totally. Okay. Side note in the rapid fire, I have been lusting after the heavy like chef presses, like the stainless steel ones, but they're kind of expensive. Do you think they're actually worth using?

46:31Ham El-Waylly:Yes. 100%. I think that going back to how we were talking about searing, it improves your sear by like five-fold because you're not really you're putting enough pressure on whatever you're cooking to make sure it's flat against that hot surface so you get a really nice even sear so strong recommend on the

46:52Matt:presses do you think i could just get like a rock or do i need like the real what's what's nice about

46:58Ham El-Waylly:the chef press i don't know how this turned into a chef chef press ad somehow but it's weighted perfectly so that it's not too heavy that it's going to crush your food but also the vents allow steam to escape so you're not steaming it okay fair fair what you would consider be the best chip flavor best chip flavor is i love a hal's jalapeno it is the only chip that i have that actually has some heat. I'm also partial to a Zaps, really any Zaps. You can't go wrong with Zaps.

47:35Matt:Totally. A spot in the East Village that you think should deserve more love.

47:40Ham El-Waylly:Hen House. Hen House, it's a great, great Lebanese spot.

47:44Matt:Something that you grew up eating in Doha that you wish was more widely available here.

47:49Ham El-Waylly:So this, it is available, quote unquote available, but I feel like most of them are not very good. It's my favorite food. It's the last thing I would like to eat before I die, chicken shawarma. Like, and really, it can be a Turkish style chicken shawarma. It can be a Lebanese style chicken shawarma. It really doesn't matter. But like a really, really good chicken shawarma spot is still, it's like tough to find.

48:15Matt:Your favorite wrestler?

48:18Ham El-Waylly:Timeless Tony Storm.

48:20Matt:Your go-to movie snack?

48:22Ham El-Waylly:I love a bugle. Nacho cheese bugle.

48:25Matt:Really?

48:25Ham El-Waylly:Yeah. I love it.

48:26Matt:I've never heard anyone in my life say that they like bugles before.

48:29Ham El-Waylly:Wait, really?

48:30Matt:I mean, they're kind of weird.

48:32Ham El-Waylly:What are they weird? They're corny. They're cheesy. You can put them on your fingers and then like eat them.

48:37Matt:That's true. You could alternate them with raspberries and just be eating.

48:43Matt:Okay, finally, three ingredients that are always in your fridge.

48:47Ham El-Waylly:Always got labneh. Always got Land O 'Lakes American cheese. and always got caramello flour tortillas. That's the first thing you need. Because they're great separately. They're great together. Quesadillas dip into labneh. It's like, it's a great, great snack.

49:03Matt:Oh, I'll be thinking about that snack for the rest of the day. Pam, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been so fun.

49:09Ham El-Waylly:Thank you so much for having me.

49:13Paula Houde:Paula Hood, welcome to This Is Taste. So great to speak with you.

49:17Matt:Wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me today.

49:19Paula Houde:I'm excited to chat about the Trotter Project. which is the nonprofit that, you know, was, I would say it came out of the life of Charlie Trotter. I mean, that's a broad term, but you can explain the organization. And we'll get into that. You've done incredible work with scholarships and really, you know, raising money to provide support for young culinary professionals. Before we get to all of that, though, you worked alongside Charlie Trotter. I did. Yeah. And we've talked about him a lot on the show. I was just chatting with Marcus Samuelson about him recently, and really we published this terrific piece about his cookbooks, and we publish his books here.

49:58Paula Houde:You know, but we rarely get to speak with people who actually knew Charlie and worked with him at least day to day. Tell me about the restaurant when you worked there. What's it like, and what's it like working with Charlie?

50:10Matt:Well, I was there in the late 90s, early 2000s, and, you know, each one of the crews and alumni that have gone through always says it was the best time when they were there. but I got to say we kind of win that one. It was, I started out as just a hostess there and quickly figured out that that was not all I was going to do. I worked all over the place. To be clear, I was front of the house only. I think Charlie had me expedite once for about a half an hour and was like, get out of the kitchen. I could manage a dining room with no problem, but trying to figure out all the stuff that was going on in the kitchen was beyond my capabilities.

50:55Matt:But he, you know, back then he did have us all try the different positions and it was pretty cool because we could see, it made us all appreciate, you know, what everyone was doing in the restaurant and the impact that each position had on the dining experience. I was, you know, at the restaurant pretty much nonstop. I started during the day because I handled the reservations. And then I worked the front door all night. And I helped book all the private parties and all of those types of things. I loved pretty much every minute that I was there. Yeah, there were always good days and bad days like there is with any job.

51:34But working next to Charlie was kind of one of the highlights of my life because, you know,

51:40Matt:So he – I know everyone's heard he was always pushing, and he was. He did. But if you liked that kind of thing, it was good because the bar was always set a bit higher each day. And if you liked that kind of thing, it worked well.

51:55Paula Houde:Let's unpack that. Okay. Like this is really, really interesting because I think the documentary, of course, aired and there was a lot of like positivity and definitely some negativity there. So we have to acknowledge that. Now, you've laid it out very clearly. If you wanted that environment, you worked there. And I think in looking at Charlie's career and really through this piece that we wrote, it was obvious that he gave a lot but required a lot. And really on the culinary side, and let's just like focus on that first, he was pushing boundaries that I don't think we can even state the importance of it.

52:31Paula Houde:What is your impression of Charlie as this innovator of cuisine in America?

52:37Matt:It's, you know, it's hard to put into words. But to be honest, I didn't know, when we were there during that time when he was really at his peak, I don't think any of us quite understood the impact of what was going on and the difference it could make. Every day was different. There was never a day that was the same. Shoot, there wasn't even a seating that was the same from first seating to second seating. Things could dramatically change. And to be in that and watch it happen in real time, I think, you know, we all were just like, okay, this is what we're doing. You know, there was no time to really stop and contemplate, you know, feelings or how we were going to do it.

53:22Matt:It was like, what do we do to make this happen? And so, you know, and it was fun. I think sometimes it was fun for Charlie to watch us go, holy crap, what do we do now? But, you know, nine times out of 10, we always figured it out. And, you know, yeah, there were people that didn't understand what we were doing. And, you know, I had to call those people and invite them back and say, we're sorry you had kind of a rough experience.

53:48Paula Houde:What do you mean by that? Let me ask you, like when you say they didn't have a great experience, what does that mean?

53:53Matt:Well, you know, I think a lot of people, the expectations for people were set very high when they were dining. And a lot of, you know, not everybody likes that innovative food. Not everybody enjoys that experience. And I think I don't, you know, just, I mean, let's be real. Any restaurant has that problem. Somebody comes in and they're in a bad mood and they're like, I'm going to just make this a miserable time for myself. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, and, you know, one of my parts of my job was to, if somebody didn't leave there satisfied, we had to find out why. and you know sometimes we couldn't make people you know just like anything you can't make everybody happy all the time but we sure tried and a lot of times we turned people around and they were like okay i get it now um and it was really that that was kind of an interesting part of of what we you know it was a very small part because it didn't happen very often can you can you like

54:50Paula Houde:let us know about the cuisine because when you're talking about this innovation and he's writing menus every day. So like there's like no to service that's the same and that shouldn't be understated. But when you say about difficulty in cuisine, like give us some examples that you remember.

55:05Matt:Well, let's, you know, people would come in, not give us, you know, this was, remember back in this time, we didn't have the internet. We didn't have things like OpenTable where you could make note of people's allergies or preferences or, you know, sometimes the menu was procured for what was in season and people were either opposed to it or not. And if somebody didn't like a dish, I mean, the worst thing that we could have done when we were clearing tables is to go back to the kitchen and Charlie's like, why didn't they eat it? And why don't you know why? And so we, you know, some people just didn't like something.

55:40Matt:And so he'd turn around on a dime and say, well, let's find out what they will eat. And then the other part on the flip side of that on the positive side is somebody would order a bottle of wine from God knows where that costs, you know, God knows what. And he would be like, okay, we're designing an entire menu off the cuff for this table. And it was, it was, it was miraculous to see. And with the product that he had in house, the ability to be, to accommodate allergies, to accommodate people's preferences of dairy, no dairy, you know, and not a lot of, you know, we didn't really, gluten allergies and intolerance wasn't really a thing back then as much.

56:23Matt:But, you know, people were definitely vegetarian or vegan. And the fact that he could do a vegan menu plus a full red meat menu at the same table and serve it at the same time. I mean, come on. I mean, that's almost impossible.

56:37Paula Houde:So give me what aspect of Charlie Trotter as a chef isn't talked about enough. I mean, we've had the documentary. We've had lots of profiles of him, both as a living chef and after his death. But give us some insight into him as a person.

56:53Matt:I think him wanting to show the world that mediocre wasn't okay. And his ability to bring out the best in everyone. I mean, I could talk for hours. but he, you know, he would see people that would come in when we had people that would save. Cause I, you know, my unique perspective is I talked to most of the people before they even got to the restaurant. So I knew a lot about some of the, our guests that came in. And again, this was pre internet where you could Google, like chefs would come from all over the world. We had a particular group of chefs that came in from, I want to say Ireland, and they had saved for like two years to come eat at the restaurant.

57:45And he figured that out.

57:48Matt:Not only did he take care of their dinner that night while they were there, he invited them to come work in the kitchen the next day. He had them sit down again. He had a generosity about him that gets overlooked a lot, in my opinion. He, you know, he did some very kind things for me personally. You know, he was a very kind person and his ability to catch people in a vulnerable state and draw out the better of them was really uncanny. You know, like you had said something and I may be jumping ahead, with Marcus about what Marcus could do to improve what he was doing. And I think Marcus has been a supporter of us, the Trotter Project, since the beginning.

58:40Matt:And I know he very much admired Charlie and had a very good relationship with him. People like Norman Van Aken and Carrie Nahabedian and some of these chefs that worked alongside him when he was a kid. And his ability to communicate himself to them is lost. You know, all the notes, I think you've probably seen some of the notes and letters that have come out and what he wrote to people is just like, I mean, it's mind-blowing.

59:11Paula Houde:I mean, he's a prolific writer and if he was alive during the sub-sec era, there's no doubt the guy would have been, you know, jamming a thousand words.

59:20Matt:Oh, exactly.

59:21Paula Houde:Putting that out there in the world. And you're referencing this interview I had with Marcus, this conversation. And we talked about how Charlie came into Marcus's restaurant, Aquavie, in the 90s and, you know, had the meal. And then he just – he, like, went to Marcus and said, listen, I have some notes for you to improve. And, you know, in some cases, maybe that would come off poorly. But Marcus embraced it and embraced that culture of improvement. And I think in retrospect, with Charlie, it seems that drive for perfection and really the physical nature of the job and this passion for providing notes and mentorship probably was a little misunderstood.

1:00:02Matt:I totally agree. And it's one of the things that the Trotter Project really kind of has gone back to. We've been around for 12 years now. And we've really gone back to, we've had several iterations of things that we've done and done successfully, done some not so successfully of trying to reach people. And we've come back to the really showing what the mentorship and scholarship of what Charlie was about as well. I mean, he did things, you know, when we can go into that in a little bit of some of where what the Trotter Project is really based off of is what he started, you know, 15 or 25 years ago.

1:00:42Matt:And, you know, and again, like you said, not all of it was received correctly, some by fault of his own, some by fault of just misinformation being out there.

1:00:53Paula Houde:Yeah, we're not going to give him a pass. I mean, he definitely had a temper and that was obvious and clearly didn't handle himself in a way that would shine brightly then and certainly not now. But I do buy in that he overall just wanted to mentor people. And of course, his genius and his innovation and kind of crystallizing new American cuisine and using products from around the world, but also local farmers from the Midwest was profound.

1:01:22Matt:Yeah, I mean, his one of the, you know, his biggest collaborators when we started the vegetarian menu or, you know, and I say vegetarian loosely because it wasn't it wasn't vegan. It was vegetarian. There's a big difference. We all know that. But, you know, Farmer Lee Jones was an integral part of that from Chef's Garden. And he's part of he's a huge part of what we do as well. And one of, you know, we started four years ago, three years ago. I can't remember now. We have a scholarship in his honor because of doing the sustainable things and working with doing things correctly in the agricultural world ties so closely into the food that we put on our plates.

1:02:04Matt:So that's been a big part of kind of reaching out to old friends of Chef Trotters and all of that.

1:02:12Paula Houde:Yeah, Lee Jones is a legend in the game.

1:02:15Matt:He's amazing.

1:02:17Paula Houde:We'll have to ask you about this one diner. And he's featured in the documentary. I'm blanking on his name. Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris. I know you're like, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, Mr.

1:02:31Matt:Ray Harris. Ray Harris.

1:02:33Paula Houde:First off, Ray Harris, if you're listening to this, I've tried reaching out to you in many forms through people, through LinkedIn. I've emailed. I mean, I would love to have you on the show. So, yeah, Ray Harris dined at Charlie Trotter's at a frequency that, you know, in today's age, you couldn't compare. I mean, he lived in New York and he would fly in on weekends and dine there. I mean, what's your assessment of Ray?

1:03:01Matt:Well, he's one of the kindest, most generous people you've ever met in your life. he's he was just you know he was I hate to use the term fixture but we just I mean when Ray we just knew Ray was coming I mean he was just part of the he was part of the the foundation basically I mean he did and then he became close personal friends with with with Charlie and they traveled the world together and and you know they made a friendship and a bond that I don't think anyone could touch. You know, he had a couple friends like that that were just absolutely exquisite human beings. I mean, Mr. Harris would send the staff these beautiful, wonderful gifts at Christmas time.

1:03:46And I mean, we took care of,

1:03:48Matt:we loved it when he came in. He was kind, generous, always, you know, willing to talk to anybody, never overstayed his welcome.

1:03:59Paula Houde:And he was fun. How many times do you think he dined at the restaurant? Oh, a hundred.

1:04:03Matt:hundreds of times I mean yeah I couldn't I couldn't I mean I he wasn't there every week but he was there I mean I mean I would say I mean I have I I don't I don't remember anything when he wasn't there like if there were big events he was always there and his wife was as well like you know when his wife was was with us he was she she came in a lot as well. And he, you know, they were just wonderful people.

1:04:32Paula Houde:I love that. I mean, again, I want to talk to Ray. Please reach out. Well, let's talk about the scholarships. I think you have launched applications for this year. We're linking to in the show notes. So anyone in the industry listening, there's this wonderful opportunity. So Paula, tell us about the scholarships that are open, what they are, who they support, and a little bit about what you're looking for in applicants?

1:04:59Matt:We do, there are three different scholarships. We have the Charlie Trotter Pursuit of Excellence Scholarship, which is geared towards culinary, baking, and pastry students. Then we have the Omaro Cantu Scholarship after our founding president. And that scholarship is geared towards hospitality management. And then we have the Farmer Lee Jones Scholarship, which is agricultural sciences. And I do need to, and food science, I do need to make a small caveat because we've had some confusion. That is not veterinary or animal husbandry. It's really geared toward the kids we're looking for, more agricultural studies for food sustainability and things like that, and farming and that nature.

1:05:46Matt:We're getting out of the livestock here. It's not in our wheelhouse. but they each three, they're up to$10 ,000 per each scholarship. We've been dividing it because I've had, we've had a lot of applicants and, and we're always raising funds, constantly trying to raise funds to support this. The Trotter family themselves, Charlie's sister and Trotter Hand Camp is, you know, just absolutely a part of this. Dylan helps support us as well. So we've been very fortunate to have the familial support from the whole Trotter family the whole 12 years that we've been doing this.

1:06:26Paula Houde:Amazing. And again, I'm linking to the application in the show notes. Sounds like an amazing opportunity for young culinary professionals. Well, speaking of Dylan, I've been in touch with Dylan. We were working on that piece. He's not been on the podcast yet, but one day we'll maybe have him on. What's your take on the future of Charlie Trotter in Chicago? You know, the space is still there and there's been plenty of—

1:06:51Matt:Yeah, he's kind of keeping things under wraps. I actually spoke—I spoke with him this morning. I'm actually going to see him at the end of this month. But he's keeping things kind of under wraps. I know his main goal is to reopen the space on a full-time basis. But he kind of likes to keep things just like his father. He likes to keep things until it's—you know, he's ready to announce it when he will. And and but he's he's doing a lot of great pop ups. He's got one coming up at the end of this month with some wonderful Nashville chefs from Nashville. And I know he wants to reopen the space. I just he hasn't he's not given a lot of details.

1:07:30Matt:So I don't want to speak for. Of course.

1:07:32Paula Houde:Yeah, we'll go right to Dylan to get his response. And when the time is right, we'll talk to him. But the space is the space, right? Like this is the iconic townhouse dining room that we know.

1:07:42Matt:It's pretty incredible. Yeah, we did an alumni dinner. He had a bunch of the front of house and chefs from back in the old days. We all did an event in August that was absolutely incredible. And it was sort of the, we had seen all the work he put into the restaurant to make it look as fresh and new as possible. The spaces are pretty much untouched from when the restaurant was opened. I mean, obviously, there had to be some work done. Carpets needed to be done, painting and all of that. But it was very surreal to be back working in the space and enjoying a full dining room again. We all looked at each other like, I can't believe we're doing this.

1:08:28Paula Houde:So special. It's so special. Well, I hope to make it to Chicago to check out the space. Paula Hood, thank you so much for joining This Is Taste.

1:08:38Matt:Yes, thank you so much.

1:08:44Matt:This 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.