Podcast appearances and mentions of Craig Claiborne

In this episode of Fabulously Delicious: The French Food Podcast, we continue our series The Story of, where we delve into the lives of extraordinary French chefs from the past. This week, we focus on the life and legacy of Pierre Franey, a master of French cuisine who brought the flavors of Burgundy to kitchens across the world, including those in America. Born in the quaint village of Saint-Vinnemer in 1921, Pierre's passion for cooking was ignited by the rich culinary traditions of his homeland, and by the time he was just a teenager, he was already embarking on a journey that would take him to the heights of the culinary world. Pierre Franey's career is a remarkable tale of hard work, resilience, and a deep love for food. After honing his skills in some of Paris's most prestigious kitchens, Pierre crossed the Atlantic to work at the French Pavilion during the New York World's Fair. His talent quickly garnered attention, and he eventually rose to become a celebrated chef in the U.S., particularly known for his time as the executive chef at Le Pavillon, one of New York's most iconic French restaurants. Yet, it was his collaboration with Craig Claiborne of The New York Times that truly cemented Pierre's influence on American cuisine, with their partnership introducing French cooking to home kitchens across the country. Throughout his career, Pierre Franey's contributions to food went far beyond the kitchen. He was a pioneer in making gourmet French cuisine approachable for home cooks, through his popular column The 60-Minute Gourmet and his television shows. In this episode, we explore his journey from a small French village to becoming a household name in America, his influence on the way we cook and enjoy food, and the lasting impact he left on the culinary world. Looking to deepen your culinary journey beyond the podcast? Andrew's latest book, Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World's Most Delicious City, is your passport to gastronomic delights in the City of Lights. Packed with recommendations for boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, and more, this guide ensures you savor the best of Parisian cuisine. Find Andrew's book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World's Most Delicious City and explore more at www.andrewpriorfabulously.com For a signed and gift-packaged copy of the book, visit https://www.andrewpriorfabulously.com/book-paris-a-food-guide-to-the-worlds-most-delicious-city  Also available on Amazon and Kindle. For those craving an immersive French food experience, join Andrew in Montmorillon for a hands-on cooking adventure. Stay in his charming townhouse and partake in culinary delights straight from the heart of France. Experience French culinary delights firsthand with Andrew's Vienne residencies. Visit https://www.andrewpriorfabulously.com/come-stay-with-me-vienne-residency for more information. Connect with Andrew on Instagram @andrewpriorfabulously or via email contact@andrewpriorfabulously.com for a chance to be featured on the podcast or his blog. You can also sign up for the substack newsletter and get more fabulous French food content and France travel tips as well as updates on life in France. https://fabulouslydelicious.substack.com/ Tune in to Fabulously Delicious on the Evergreen Podcast Network for more tantalizing tales of French gastronomy. Remember, whatever you do, do it Fabulously! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonjour, les enfants de club! This week we debone, season, and roast iconic French chef Jacques Pépin's buttery memoir “The Apprentice.” From giving Charles de Gaulle gout to inventing the midtown souperie, Craig Claiborne's sassy homosexuality, befriending la (trés) grande dame Julia Child, the shame of the American supermarket, communal bread ovens and the proper way to kill a canard— ça c'ést une journée délicieuse! Bon appétit, bitch.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/cbcthepodSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

According to Craig Claiborne, a New York Times food critic, various regions in the United States have food rights. People want more authentic food true to the region they're from. This topic then leads to Fr. Ben, Silvia, and Khira talking about basic human rights and voting, and what it means to be an authentic Catholic American. This is a hot topic, especially for voting year! We hope you enjoy! Got a question you'd like to ask Fr. Ben? Go to Ask Fr. Ben | St. Michael Church (stmichaelmemphis.org) to submit questions and topic ideas for the podcast. You can also follow us on Facebook at Soul Food Priest.

Topic: Just a few days away from Thanksgiving festivities, we will share a few last-minute tips, dive into a Craig Claiborne Thanksgiving story, and share a conversation with Francis Lam - the host of Splendid Table and Turkey Confidential, which airs on MPB Thanksgiving morning at 9 am.Host(s): Malcolm White, Carol Palmer, and Java ChatmanGuest(s): Craig Claiborne, and Francis LamEmail: food@mpbonline.org. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Food writer Craig Claiborne called cooking “child's play and adult joy.” But a kitchen full of recipe clutter can drain all the joy from cooking. In episode #52 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, offers strategies for filtering and organizing your saved recipes. We also introduce a new “homework assignment” segment—and a contest!Show notes: http://cfhou.com/tcfw052The Clutter Fairy Weekly is a live webcast and podcast designed to help you clear your clutter and make space in your home and your life for more of what you love. We meet Tuesdays at noon (U.S. Central Time) to answer your decluttering questions and to share organizing tools and techniques, success stories and “ah-hah!” moments, seasonal suggestions, and timeless tips.To participate live in our weekly webcast, join our meetup group, follow us on Facebook, or subscribe to our mailing list.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/theclutterfairy)

David Waltuck was the chef-owner of legendary Chanterelle, the pioneer of fine dining in downtown New York when it was very industrial and fringe. John Novi received a 4-star review from the New York Times critic Craig Claiborne 4 months after he opened his restaurant in the Hudson Valley in 1969. Ric Orlando, former owner of New World Home Cooking in Woodstock and Chef of New World Bar and Bistro in Albany, is a nationally famous local chef, thanks to his presence on Food Network and rock star appeal. All three operated restaurants that became iconic in their time, and all closed as the restaurant industry changed. This episode is part oral documentation of the particular history in New York, Woodstock, and Hudson Valley, part insider stories of the industry, and most of all, an ode to the art of cooking and love for the food. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/forge-collective8/message

"A handful of couscous is better than Mecca and all its dust." So says a famous Moroccan proverb about almsgiving. The maxim cannot be tossed off as mere chauvinism about the tiny balls of dough that are Morocco's national dish. You don't have to be from Africa to appreciate couscous. The late Craig Claiborne, for example, called it one of the dozen greatest dishes in the world. Paula Wolfert, who 30 years ago wrote what is still, in my judgment, the definitive treatise on the subject, claimed that couscous can be compared without exaggeration to such great specialties as Japanese sukiyaki, Peking duck, bouillabaisse, and paella Valenciana and called it the "crowning achievement" of Moroccan cuisine. It is to Morocco what pasta is to Italy. Now perhaps you've tried couscous, soaking the granules in water for 5 minutes and then fluffing them with a fork as the instructions on the box typically direct, and wondered what all the fuss is about. I felt the same way until a recent visit to

We officially now have our very own AppleSauced beer bread recipe! James and Michael chat with baking expert Deb Ross. She provides some fantastic tips for home baking and cooking. Discover who wins the inaugural game of Michael vs. The Expert. Guest: Deb Ross Beer: Fat Tire Belgian White by New Belgium Brewing Company Deb’s Desert Island Books: The New York Times Cook Book by Craig Claiborne; The Dean & Deluca Cookbook by David Rosengarten and Giorgio DeLuca; Entertaining by Martha Stewart; The Indian Cooking Course by Monisha Bharadwaj; the Baker’s Manual by Joseph Amendola and Nicole Rees Deb Ross/AppleSauced Beer Bread Recipe 1 lb 6 oz of warm water2 oz of cake yeast or 0.66 oz instant yeast 2.5 oz of oil1 lb molasses1.5 lb rye flour.25 oz salt1 lb 2 oz stout beer Mix dough and give a single rise. Bake in loaf tins at 375 deg for 7-8 mins then lower to 300 deg for 33mins. Serve with whipped honey butter.

Dubbed the "Queen of Screen and Cuisine," the "Scheherazade of the Kitchen" and "the Julia Child of Indian Cookery," actor and chef Madhur Jaffrey graciously joins us on the show. You Might Know Her From Shakespeare Wallah, Chutney Popcorn, Cotton Mary, I Feel Bad, Prime, and Bombay Dreams. Madhur talked about being responsible for connecting filmmakers Merchant and Ivory, acting opposite a powerhouse like Meryl Streep, and finding a second career as a chef. Madhur is also the mother of previous YMKHF guest Sakina Jaffrey. Folks, we know it’s a strange time in the world right now and we hope this brings you a little light. Stay safe!  Follow us on social media: @damianbellino || @rodemanne  Discussed this week: Rita Wilson’s “Girls Night In” Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have Covid-19 My mom hates Forrest Gump (1994) Colin Hanks Hankskercheifs Chet Hanks speaking Patois Everly Brothers not The Mamas and the Papas  Love is Blind Damian interviewed Carlton from LiB Madhur is “the Julia Child of Indian cookery” (see cooking clips here) Madhur is a Commander of the  British Empire Madhur co-starred in the lesbian indie, Chutney Popcorn (1999) with her daughter and YMKHF favorite, Sakina Jaffrey (episode #25) Ismail Merchant and Cotton Mary  Anglo-Indians in UK Mulligatawny soup is Anglo-Indian Trained at RADA I Feel Bad NBC sitcom Wallace Shawn has no food allergies Wants to do drama like Big Little Lies/Marriage Story Was on Broadway in Bombay Dreams She loves Marmite  Rubbishy foods: Werther’s Original Danny Kaye can cook Craig Claiborne had party where Kaye was cooking when Paul Prudhomme too  Worked with DeNiro in Flawless (1999) Played Meryl Streep’s therapist in Prime (2005) The NYT on Madhur rapping Mr Cardamom’s “Nani” Played a party guest in Wolf and Six Degrees of Separation Madhur Jaffrey likes orange and yellow Jell-O 

Breakfast: THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK ABOUT THE BEST MEAL OF THE DAYBy The Editors of Extra Crispy Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cookery by the Book podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors. Kat Kinsman: Hi. I'm Kat Kinsman. I'm the Senior Food and Drinks Editor at Extra Crispy, and we've got a new book, Breakfast: The Most Important Book About the Best Meal of the Day.Suzy Chase: This book was written by you and the other editors of Extra Crispy. Tell us about Extra Crispy.Kat Kinsman: Oh, wow. It's such an exciting ... This book, I'm so excited about it. It's actually a collection of material that we've run on Extra Crispy and some new things that we've written. Extra Crispy is your one-stop shopping for everything about breakfast: culture, news, essays, recipes. If it's breakfast, we're going to cover it. I know it sounds silly, so you have a site that's just about breakfast, but since we launched in June of 2016, we realized that, when you go narrow, you can go really, really deep, so we use breakfast as a Trojan horse to talk about a million different things.Suzy Chase: In 1875, speaking of deep, cookbook author Marion Harland praises eggs as elegant and frugal, so here's the age-old question: Why do we eat eggs for breakfast? I've never understood that.Kat Kinsman: Oh, my goodness. We actually have an essay. I don't know if it's in the book, but we have run an essay, I believe recently, about why that is. I mean think about it. They're so incredibly adaptable. They can store for a fairly long time. They are a fantastic and inexpensive source of nutrition, of protein. They keep you going for a while. Again, I think it got back to the adaptability of it, that there's so many different ways that you can eat them. They're really personal is what I've realized. It's something that, without a whole lot of effort, you can make for yourself in the morning, and you can make it exactly to your liking, or it's not too hard to guide somebody else to make them exactly the way you want them too. It's an easy way to give somebody pleasure, and sustenance, and a little bit of affirmation in the day, "I see you. I know how to make you happy. Here's eggs just the way you want them."Suzy Chase: I didn't know that, in the early 1900s, breakfast cereal was invented in response to indigestion blamed on meat and egg consumption. That sounds like B.S. to me, right? It sounds like a marketing thing.Kat Kinsman: Oh, absolutely was. The people at Battle Creek, the scientists there who came up with Raisin Bran, and flakes, and all that kind of stuff were doing it ... They were wellness freaks in a really early incarnation, and they were doing it to quash libido and-Suzy Chase: What? Really?Kat Kinsman: They were doing all sorts of ... Oh, it's just so nuts. It's in the early days of Kellogg's. They got some zealots in there to start to develop these foods that were supposed to be optimized for health but also sort of add moral fiber to your day. If you look at all the stuff that they were doing in Battle Creek and then at these sort of wellness resorts that they had, they were doing these things to control people's emotional impulses and set them on the path of the good and righteous. It was almost culty how all this stuff came about. I'm actually working on a piece right now about the moral intertwinings of the early days of flake cereal. It's really astounding stuff if you dig back just a little bit over a century. Suzy Chase: I feel like fried eggs are a bit out of fashion at the moment, but I love a good fried egg, especially a diner fried egg. Talk about some ways to upgrade the good old fried egg. Kat Kinsman: Oh, one very, very easy thing to do is use a ton of olive oil, get it just ripping hot, put the egg in there, and spoon the olive oil a little bit over the edges until they get good and lacy. It's a very ... Oh, I wish I could say the term. It's a Spanish term. Chef Katie Button really drove this home to me, and it's her favorite was to do it, but the way it translates is like lacy eggs. The center of it remains good and runny and beautiful, but if you can get the pan to the right temperature and use olive oil instead of butter, because butter can burn and it gets that sort of acrid taste to it, but olive oil can take a little bit more heat, and you get those brown, crispy, lacy edges and still have that runny yolk, and it's the simplest thing in the world to do. Another really, really easy thing to do is just put a little bit of Aleppo pepper over top of it, just a little bit, and have that olive oil with it, and that is a little bit of heat, a little pop of ... just a little pop of joy and sensory pleasure to start the day with. The texture of the lacy edges of the egg with a little bit of crunch of good salt, the Aleppo pepper, if you have that with some bread, that just hits every single sensory button, and it's a great way to start the day.Suzy Chase: There's an infamous op-ed in The New York Times that says, and I will quote, "Brunch is for jerks." What are your thoughts on brunch, especially brunch in New York City? Kat Kinsman: Here is my thing. I've always ascribed to the notion that, if it tastes good, it is good. I'm laissez-faire about these sorts of things. I realize the older I get the less prescriptive I am about things that bring people pleasure. I mean we are living in times of turmoil right now where I really believe, if you can bring any sort of simple pleasure into your life and it's not harmful to anyone else, why not? The great thing about brunch is the community aspect of it. I mean sure, you can go have brunch by yourself. That's absolutely fine. You can have it with one other person but, ideally, it's a vehicle for community. We ran this piece a few months ago by Nik Sharma who ... Oh, my gosh. I love this man. He has a book coming out. It's seriously one of the loveliest cookbooks I have ever seem. Everybody needs to buy Nik Sharma's book. He wrote a piece about why gay brunch is so important and especially in his early days ... so after coming out, and moving, and coming together in this safe space with friends where they could go through what happened that week and talk through their loves, and their heartbreaks, and everything in a safe, communal space before marriage was legalized. It was such a powerful, beautiful space. You talk now about the transition of now that marriage is legal and people are able to host brunch at home with their spouses and invite people over to their houses, but talking about the early importance of these sort of queer spaces to get together over brunch. I mean if mimosas and sort of crappy Eggs Benedict can be a vehicle for that sort of thing, I am all for it.Suzy Chase: There's a whole section devoted to the Dutch Baby. What is that?Kat Kinsman: Well, because it makes you look like a freaking genius. I hadn't really made them, and Dawn Perry, who has a few ... She's a goddess on Earth, and she's at Real Simple. Before she had really started up in this position at Real Simple, she was writing a bunch for us, and she ... I trust everything this woman does. Everyone needs to watch her show. She really drove home the fact that they're incredibly versatile. I think this thing was called A Dutch baby is the Little Black Dress at Your Party or something like that but, really, it's this thing where you just bring together a few ingredients. You put them in a cast iron pan. It puffs up. It's such an ooh-la-la kind of moment. You can make it sweet. You can make it savory. You can adapt it to whatever your particular taste is. You can make them all a la minute at a party and have that great razzle-dazzle moment where it's brunch and, "Oh, no big deal. I just made this great big, explosive popover thing," and everyone you brought there sees your moment of ooh and ah and gets to watch it move and deflate, and it can be dressed however you want. It's a glorious bit of theater that is really easy to pull off.Suzy Chase: I went down the rabbit hole researching this recipe and, in 1966, Craig Claiborne was at Dave Eyre's home in Hawaii. Eyres was the editor of Honolulu Magazine at the time. David made a Dutch baby for Craig, and Claiborne came back, wrote about it in The New York Times, and it's such a beautiful thing. I know for a fact that Martha Stewart loves the lemon butter Dutch baby recipe that you have on page 47.Kat Kinsman: Oh, my gosh, what a classic that is. Those particular flavors are ... they just work so beautifully, and it makes it feel like you're eating pie for breakfast, which I wholeheartedly endorse, by the way. Pie for breakfast is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Dutch babies, I feel like they're ... they have such a funny history. There is a town I'm totally blanking on on the West Coast, I feel like it's in California. It was like a Gold Rush thing. I should know about this because I wrote about it for the site recently, but can we talk for a second about Craig Claiborne and what an amazing taste maker he was?Suzy Chase: Yes.Kat Kinsman: Oh, my gosh. I think I'm probably one of the few sort of people who, right now, have read the memoir, the warts and all, of his memoir. People have forgotten about Craig, and it breaks my heart. He was such as taste maker. I remember him ... I don't remember when he did it, but the importance of him writing about the shrimp and grits at Crook's Corner with Bill Neal, this dish that ... it has some sort of murky origins and stuff, but he saw the beauty in this, wrote about it in the Times and, all of a sudden, people started really paying attention to this corner of North Carolina. I've made his mother's spaghetti dish on more than one occasion. I've made his shrimp and grits. What a legacy. He really did the legwork to go around the country, see the things that people were doing regionally, and then ... Nobody should need justification or the imprimatur of a giant publication but, at the time, he used it as such an incredible platform to really sing the praises of these regional dishes and make them national favorites. Sorry, I love Craig Claiborne.Suzy Chase: Well, he's one of those guys people say, "If you could have a dinner party and invite anyone living or dead, who would you invite?" He's one of those guys you want at your dinner table.Kat Kinsman: Oh, my God, him and Clementine Paddleford. There would be no doubt that you-Suzy Chase: Who's that?Kat Kinsman: Oh, God, she was spectacular. Suzy Chase: That's a great name.Kat Kinsman: Isn't it? She was incredible. There was a bio of her that came out a few years back, and she was an incredible woman who ... She was at one of the rival papers in New York. She flew her own plane, so she was a pilot and would fly her little plane around the country to sort of go in and see how people really were cooking in all of these regions like, really, the kind of cooking that would be in church cookbooks that was not highfalutin restaurant food because there really wasn't a whole lot of highfalutin restaurant food, but really talking about home cooking in regions all over the country. She would get in her little plane and fly there and come back and write in her paper. She was an established newspaper editor, and then Craig Claiborne came in, few years younger than her, and he was young, he was cute, and he sort of ate her lunch, so people really don't know as much about her legacy, but oh, gosh, I wish I could remember the name. I'm so blanking this morning on the names of all the books, but look up the book about her. It's really, really just a fantastic thing.Suzy Chase: Food that's weird to people you've never heard of isn't weird to those who grow up eating it, so I guess Livermush would fall into that category. I didn't grow up eating it.Kat Kinsman: Oh, my God.Suzy Chase: I have no idea what it is. Kat Kinsman: I think it could use some rebranding just from the name because, if people actually had it, it would ... oh, it would blow their minds. That piece by Sheri Castle that is in the book ... First of all, Sheri is a tremendous advocate for North Carolina food. She's an extraordinary writer, and she really sings the praises of mountain food and North Carolina food and really sings to the dignity of these foods that ... A lot of these foods come from deprivation, so Livermush is liver and mixed in with grains, and it's essentially made into a loaf and fried, and you slice it, and it gets golden brown on the outside. It's a little bit sort of mushy, spongy on the inside. It's basically like a meatloaf, and it is the most glorious thing. There are a few towns throughout North Carolina that throw festivals in honor of it. There's brand called Neese's that is one of the premier brands of it, and they have Livermush. They also have liver pudding, which is very like it with a slightly different spice blend to it, and they're just really preserving this heritage. There are a few different brands that make it. My husband's from North Carolina, so every time I go down there I try to seek out all the different regional brands and variations of it. Like what you said, the food that people didn't grow up eating might seem weird to them, but that's part of our core mission at Extra Crispy, is to really give the dignity to these foods that they deserve, because it really bothers me when people yuck other people's yum, just because they're unfamiliar with it. Food is so inextricably tied to identity, that to slam somebody else's food just because it seems weird or unfamiliar is unfortunately, since time immemorial, been a way to other people. It's done to first generation or immigrant kids, who bring their lunch to school and it smells different than what the other kids are eating. It's something that is often used as a tool to alienate people who might not be from the dominant culture, when in fact it should be a tool to bring people together. Here is this little part of my culture, my heritage. Here's a way to understand a little bit more about me. It's an act of generosity to share your food and it's something that we really, really try to emphasize on Extra Crispy, that we approach all foods with an open mind and an open heart. And ideally let somebody from that culture tell the story of it and why it's so important, and hopefully open up some new doors to it.Suzy Chase: Eleven fancy butters were sourced, to find the best one which is Bordier. Is it Bordi-a or bordi-er?Kat Kinsman: That is a really good question. Suzy Chase: Let's just go with Bordi-a. Kat Kinsman: Yes. I believe that is how someone who actually knew how to pronounce it -Suzy Chase: Yes. (laughs)Kat Kinsman: ... did pronounce it, but we've been all over the place on that. I got to take part in this tasting. Suzy Chase: I saw on a Mind of a Chef episode, where Chef Ludo goes to the factory. Have you seen that? Where they slap the butter with the paddles and they stamp it, and they put salt on it. Kat Kinsman: I've seen it. Suzy Chase: It's glorious. Kat Kinsman: We brought in my friend John Winterman who is the managing partner at Batard, but he is also a butter freak. I believe we gave him the name Maitre D'Beurre to guide us through this. The whole Extra Crispy team, we are butter aficionados, freaks, obsessives, whatever you want to call it. We sourced all these butters. It was mostly my fantastic colleagues, Margaret Eby and Rebecca Firkser. I think at some point, Margaret is just going to go off on a butter sabbatical. This is her dream to go somewhere and really learn how to make butter. She and Rebecca went out and sourced all of these different high-end butters. They had already done this with grocery store butters. And in that one, Kerrygold came out top as it should. It's a fantastic butter. But I think we grabbed the corporate card to expense butter. They tried it on bread. I have a gut condition and I can't really eat bread. I'm trying to remember what I had it on. It was radishes. I had mine on radish slices. Suzy Chase: Oh, that's so smart. Kat Kinsman: Yeah, it was a really great way to get to do it. Also I didn't fill up on bread. I was mad not be able to have it with the bread, but we work with what we are given. We just tasted them through. Came up with the top few and then put them all head to head. The Bordier was incredible. I have to say, there was a slight followup later because Bordier does variations. With those, we were just doing salted butters, I believe. Otherwise, you can really extra fall down the rabbit hole. Bordier does one with this flint pepper in it. They do a few different variations -Suzy Chase: Oh, no. Kat Kinsman: Well Margaret found the raspberry one -Suzy Chase: No.Kat Kinsman: They only make a little bit. It is one of the best things I've ever had in my life. So it is butter. It is raspberries. It's raspberry juice. We all tried it and we all just stared at each other. Suzy Chase: (laughs)Kat Kinsman: We could not speak. So Ryan Grim who is the editor of the site who is just a delightful human being. If you've ever seen the Instant Pot videos that I do, he is Mr. Grim -Suzy Chase: Yes. Kat Kinsman: -- in the videos. He's our boss. But he was just, you know, the 1,000 yard stare, like just eating this. It was the purest raspberries, the most beautiful butter. If you buy it where we bought it, we bought a quarter pound of it, it would be $72 a pound. But we sort of rationalized this because we got a quarter pound and said if you go into a party, you could bring a bottle of wine. That's great. It gets push on the shelf with the other wines. If you roll in with this butter and a baguette, you are the star of the party.Suzy Chase: Oh, my gosh. Where do you get this butter, do you know? Can you get it in New York City? Kat Kinsman: We got it ... Yes, you can. We got it at Le District, which conveniently is right below our office in Brookfield Place.Suzy Chase: Look at that! (laughs) Okay, I'm going down there today. Kat Kinsman: Yes. Actually if you want me to do it when I get into the office, I will look and see if they have it so you don't waste a trip. Suzy Chase: Okay. (laughs) Thank you. How did you get the inspiration to turn a king cake into french toast? Kat Kinsman: So Margaret Eby, who is our senior culture editor. She and I both are New Orleans obsessives. So she grew up in Mississippi and would go to New Orleans all the time. I've been going since ... Oh golly. So I used to work for CNN and I had the pleasure of my intro into New Orleans was we would have these secret suppers. I got to throw one at James Carville and Mary Matalin's house. They are such tremendous ambassadors for the city. They are food obsessives and they let us throw this party at our house. Sorry, at their house. I wish it was my house. So I had sort of a crash course in getting to go to New Orleans. My husband was supposed to meet me and our dog got sick and he couldn't come. So I was okay, well that means we'll have to go back and you'll have to come with me. He fell in love with it too, so we go three, four times a year because we love it so much. Margaret goes as often as she can. She actually rides in a Mardi Gras crew. So a great act of love from both of us is to bring back king cake when we go. We were just thinking king cake is ... There's a lot of really bad king cake out there. The intention is great, but if we're being honest, a lot of it kind of sucks and it gets stale really, really quickly. So we were thinking, it would also feel like a sin to throw away king cake. So we decided to do it two different ways. We made french toast out of king cake. Then king cake out of french toast. To me, it's exemplified what we do at Extra Crispy where we really do try to tell stories about particular tradition and cultures. Also we have a chance to get really weird. We sort of joke, the extra in Extra Crispy is that we have permission to take things to strange degrees and just have a whole lot of fun and find joy in this. I mean breakfast is a meal that it can be formal. It can just be for sustenance, but think about those weekend breakfasts when you just get to play and goof and eventually feed people. It's a really, really fun thing. We take people seriously and we take people's culture seriously and their identities and stuff. We don't always necessarily take ourselves too seriously.Suzy Chase: Speaking of extra, Chapter 6 Franken-foods and mashups. Kat Kinsman: (laughs)Suzy Chase: Velveeta chex mix nacho dirt bag casserole. Say that fast five times. That's hard to say. Kat Kinsman: (laughs) Suzy Chase: Is always a good thing, right? Kat Kinsman: So Margaret and I ... I want to explain dirt bag a little bit if that's okay. (laughs)Suzy Chase: Sure. Kat Kinsman: So this all came about because I had never ... I had my notion of sort of the term dirt bag. Margaret and I were texting while she was at a lake house with a bunch of her friends. She was leading what she called her best dirt bag life. I was like unpack that for please. She said, you know, it is the self when you are around people who you deeply trust and love that you don't have to put in any sort of guard or errs. You can be wearing whatever you want. You're comfortable. Ideally you're in a lake house or just somewhere where nobody's faultin. Everybody is just their most chill out, lazy, maybe a teeny bit tipsy, kind of self. And you're really happy and free. She texted me saying here's what we have in the house. We have oh golly, like some leftover bottoms of the bags of various chips. We have some eggs. We have some beer. We have some bread. She asked me okay, what can I make from this? I was like girl, you've got a casserole there. You have everything you need to make ... I am a big fan of a casserole. You can put absolutely anything together so long as you have some sort of bread-like substance, a liquid, ideally an egg, though you don't necessarily have to have an egg to bind it. You put it in a dish. You stick it in the oven, then put it under the broiler to get the top crunchy. Out of this came ... And I was like especially if you can pour beer into there as the liquid, you win. And Velveeta is its own magical substance. If you don't try to think of it as cheese, you're better off. You can use real cheese if you want to, but Velveeta, I think really gets the zeitgeist there. You can make it with absolutely anything so long as you follow the formula. It's cheesy and delicious and it's even better the next day. Suzy Chase: In addition to being the senior food and drinks editor at Extra Crispy, you also write and talk about tough, real life stuff; anxiety and depression. You wrote a book called, "Hi Anxiety, Life with a Bad Case of Nerves." You started the conversation in the restaurant community about depression, anxiety addiction and eating disorders on chefs with issues. Talk a little bit about that. Kat Kinsman: Yes, so I have been pretty open for a long time about my own struggles with anxiety and depression. Then recently a diagnosis of ADHD, which was contributing to the anxiety as I found out. It's something that I have dealt with as long as I can remember. My friends knew about a certain amount of it and definitely my family did. I've never been ashamed about talking about it, but it wasn't necessarily something I led with. When I was at CNN, I was the food editor there and I also wrote for CNN Living. And I wrote an essay about my experience with depression throughout my life and then later I wrote about anxiety. It opened up a conversation there at work and then we were able to ... Both of them went viral and they were really kind and generous and thoughtful enough to let me really explore that further there with some conversations and community stuff that we did. What happened was that I also was the food editor, so I would be interviewing a chef there or at my next job when we would be doing some video or whatever it happened to be and I'd be recording it. There would be a moment where we would stop and turn off the recorder to change batteries or change tapes. A couple of times it happened that the chef would be like hey, actually can I talk to you about something? Then they would tell me about their own particular struggles with depression or anxiety or addiction or whatever it happened to be. Or someone who they worked with in their kitchen. That happened once and I felt like okay, this is somebody who just needed to get it off their chest. I'm so grateful that they were willing to trust me with it. Then it happened again. Then it started to happen more than half the time. I started to think there's really something going on here. So after a few months of this, I threw up a website on January 1st, 2016 and I put up a poll asking people are you dealing with any of these issues? If so, do you feel open talking about it? Do you get treatment? All this stuff. I figured I'd maybe get a few dozen responses. I've gotten well over 2,000 responses at this point. I started getting letters and calls, emails, Facebook messages, Twitter messages from people saying, "Oh, my god. I thought I was the only one." I realized it was really a huge crisis. The month after I started this site, three different chef owners took their own lives that I knew about. It's constant. I cannot stress this enough. Chefs and hospitality workers and bartenders die all the time and people don't talk about it. Whether it is by suicide or whether it is by as they call it, "slow suicide" of rough choices or addiction or whatever it happens to be. That was three in one month. One that was very, very high profile and two that were less so, but people happened to tell me. I did the math on this and realized just the toll this takes on the industry. So I started this website. I got the opportunity to speak about it at a few conferences. I realized this was way, way, way bigger than me. I couldn't field all of this stuff by myself. It takes a toll. I'm happy to do it and it adds so much to me, but it's a lot. So I started a Facebook group last summer while I was recovering from surgery where people could just come any hour of the day or night, and have open conversations about what they were dealing with. And three months ago, there were 828 people in it. Now, as of last night, there were 2300 people in it-Suzy Chase: Oh my God.Kat Kinsman: The thing that happened was Anthony Bourdain killed himself, and yeah, which so many people are still reeling from ... The thing that's been going on also over the course of this last year, two and a half years that I've been doing this is, I've gotten a community of people who are starting this conversation in their own community. There are groups all over the country operating independently where they're gathering together people in the industry in their particular towns to talk about it, to offer the solidarity. Denver is incredible for that. There was a thing...Recently changed the name from Mile-High Hospitality Hazards...Not sure what the new name of it is, but they're doing great work to get people together. There's Ben's Friends throughout the south. That is specifically for people in recovery in the hospitality industry, and people are really getting together and taking care of one another in a way that they haven't before. And for the first time in awhile, I have hope that people don't feel like they're alone, they don't feel like it's taboo, they don't feel like they are weak for dealing with these things. I'm gutted, still, as so many of us are by the loss of Tony and if there's anything halfway okay that came out of this, it is that people are talking and hopefully more lives aren't going to be lost, even though I know that they have been since him. But hopefully the trend will change.Suzy Chase: I just got back from our beach house. All I brought were Anthony Bourdain books-Kat Kinsman: Yes.Suzy Chase: And I was just trying to find an answer. Is there an answer in this sentence? What happened? Because everything he ever said was, "That was my old life." He got beyond it and had a child and lived for her, it seemed like. And it's just like, "Wow." If he can fall to pieces, we all can.Kat Kinsman: Yeah. No one's immune to this. And this is why it's really important to me to never say "cure" about mental health issues. We'll never know exactly why, with him, and we have all wracked our brains and our hearts in thinking, "Is there something I could've said, done?" Any of these things that you didn't know, looking back at the last DM that he sent me, and is there something I should've said? But no, that's the thing, is like, it can come and get you at unsuspecting times. I don't say cure. I only ever say manage, and I'm pretty open about the fact that even for me, I've been dealing with this for a long time. I'm incredibly lucky. I am a straight, white, cisgendered married woman with health insurance and employment. I have every single advantage that a person could have, except for the only way there could be sort of more privilege present is if I were a man. Yeah, but that doesn't make me immune to this. It just means that I have more resources to deal with this. I have an incredibly supportive and fantastic spouse. I have friends and a community for whom I am so grateful. My Extra Crispy colleagues are so fundamental to my heart. It sounds maybe silly to some people to say this about a work situation, but it's so an emotionally great place to work, because we all have genuine affection and respect and care for one another. And I realize that is a tremendous thing, but at the same time, this summer, I had a very, very dark month where I went down...I have a panic disorder, as well, and I had...It was especially post-Tony. I ended up going around the country speaking with groups of chefs. I do a lot of closed-door meetings with chefs where I just get people together and talk about it, talk about what they're feeling about getting resources. The day it happened, we all found out about it the week before. I had been at the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival, where Kim Severson and I got people together and talked about things. I was talking in Charleston over the next couple of days. I was already scheduled for that. I went to the Aspen Food and Wine Festival the next weekend and talked to the other chefs there. I was on the road. I was ragged. I was revisiting my own trauma. I was sad about the loss of my friend and worried about other friends of his. And I was just in a susceptible place, and I got really, really dark. And I had a panic attack that lasted for an entire month. And I am someone who has all the therapy, has all of the resources, has all of this stuff, and it still happened, which is why you'll see me on Twitter having check-ins with people. It's incredibly important to check in on people who seem like they're doing okay, people who don't seem like they're doing okay, to ask you friends how they're doing and let them know it's okay if they don't say, like, "Oh, I'm fine." They can give you the real answer. I can't say this enough. It's so important to check in. I also-Suzy Chase: Especially in this age of social media, where everyone's Kim Kardashian. Everything's amazing. And it might not be.Kat Kinsman: Yeah. So I also got trained as a crisis counselor with Crisis Text Line, which everyone needs to have this number in their phone to share it with everybody. Text 741741 in the states. You can contact them by direct messenger on Facebook, and there is somebody there 24/7 to talk you, as they call it, from a hot moment to a cool call. And it's an incredible thing, so I trained as a counselor there, so I learned how to really deescalate situations. And a very important thing I learned there was the importance of asking people point-blank if they're thinking about killing themselves. And that is a harsh thing to have to say. I know people think that if you bring up suicide that it makes people more likely or puts the notion in their head. What they told us is that it's actually the opposite, because it bring it out into the open, it makes it not just this taboo thing. It actually shocks some people into reality, like, "Oh my God, yeah, actually now that you say the word"-Suzy Chase: And verbalizing it.Kat Kinsman: Yeah. And it's an awkward conversation to have, to ask somebody, but several times recently, I have asked friends that, and sometimes you get a very, very scary answer. But the thing I always say to chefs is yes, it's awkward if your line cook cries in front of you. That's a hell of a lot better than crying at their funeral. And I'm sorry to make it so stark, but those actually are the stakes of it, too. So during this really rotten time that I was having that was sort of spurred by being away from my support systems, being tired, revisiting trauma, a couple of stressful situations. My sleep was bad, my therapist was out of the country for three weeks and stuff. And I was lucky enough to have people around me who I could say, "I'm not okay" to, and I ended up, my therapist came back in town, I went and saw my physician who put me on an ADHD medication that, honestly, within 45 minutes, my brain felt calmer than it had in a month or longer, and it was an amazing thing. I was lucky to be able to ask for help and to have people around me saying like, "Hey, what are you doing for yourself?" But I'm somebody who talks about this pretty openly, and I think of myself as a solid, stable person who has...I've been lucky enough to have some incredible career opportunities, and it can still happen to me. So we really, really, really have to keep checking in on our people, no matter what beautiful things they're putting on Instagram-Suzy Chase: Yeah.Kat Kinsman: Whatever they're saying, look for the messages between the lines, or even just send them a text saying, "Just thinking about you." It really matters to do that.Suzy Chase: For season 4 of Cookery By the Book podcast, I am kicking off a new segment called The Last Meal. On a lighter note.Kat Kinsman: Yeah.Suzy Chase: If you had to place an order for your last meal on earth, what would it be?Kat Kinsman: I'd honestly be happy going out with an egg and cheese or a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll from a deli. Cup of coffee. Maybe a glass of champagne. I mean, that egg and cheese sandwich...which I can't eat because my gut thing, but if I knew it was my last meal, it really wouldn't matter. I love that perfect...As my friend Eric Diesel calls it, the deli egg bomb. It satisfies all my texture needs. It never fails to put a smile on my face, so I think it would have to be that.Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?Kat Kinsman: Ah. On the web, well, ExtraCrispy.com. That is home base. On Twitter, I am @KittenWithAWhip. On Instagram, I'm @katkinsman, and if you go to Tarts.org, which is the domain that I've had since 1997, I think you can also get there from katkinsman.com...That has all the links to all of the social...And it links to buy this fantastic Extra Crispy book by the editors of Extra Crispy. I just want to give a shoutout to Ryan Grimm, Margaret Eby, Rebecca Firkser, and then Kate Welsh, she recently moved on from the team to a fantastic opportunity, but they all put their heart and soul and everything into this book. Our former designer, Lauren Kolm, did some of the illustrations. The team in Birmingham shot the heck out of this. It's incredibly beautiful. Hugh Atchison wrote an incredible foreword, so we'd be remiss not to mention all those fantastic people.Suzy Chase: That's like an awards show. I'm playing you off with the music. Thank you for all of your great work that's changing lives. And thanks so much for coming on Cookery By the Book podcast. Kat Kinsman: Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Suzy Chase: Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, and while you're there, please take a moment to rate and review Cookery By the Book. You can also follow me on Instagram @cookerybythebook. Twitter is @IAmSuzyChase. And download your kitchen mixtapes, music to cook by, on Spotify at Cookery By the Book. Thanks for listening.

This week's guest on Special Sauce is food television personality and pioneering chef Sara Moulton, who is as unpretentious as she is accomplished. And when I say accomplished I mean accomplished. Sara is currently the host of the PBS series Sara's Weeknight Meals and the co-host of Milk Street Radio. She previously was the host of the live television show Cooking Live on the Food Network for almost ten years. Suffice it to say, Sara should be familiar to anyone who has watched cooking shows on television. Want an example of her lack of pretense? Here is her take on leftovers: "I'd rather open up a refrigerator filled with leftovers than start with a blank canvas. Leftovers talk to me." Or how about this detail from one of her many food-related jobs in college: "I was a waitress at an all-night diner where we had to wear a DayGlo orange uniform and white nurse's shoes." It may have been the uniform, and it may just have been the job itself, but whatever it was, Sara's mother was horrified by her situation, and tried to help her in a way that would only make sense to a parent: "My mother wrote to Craig Claiborne and Julia Child, did not ask me, and asked them what her daughter should do if she wanted to become a chef." After her many years on television, I was surprised when I found out that Sara was a reluctant TV host. "I thought that was vulgar," she explains. "Being a good WASP, it's like, "Oh, then you're looking for attention." I also loved hearing the advice she'd give to guests on Cooking Live: "Smile constantly for no particular reason." As for her pioneering days as a young woman chef, Sara has some harrowing stories, but for those you're just going to have to tune into part 1 of her Special Sauce interview. *Ed note: For those of you wondering where part 2 of my Special Sauce interview with Matt Goulding is, we'll be publishing it in a couple of months. --- The transcript for this episode can be found over at Serious Eats.

Products of the Mind Episode 10: Star Wars Trademarks Welcome to Episode 10 of Products of the Mind. On this episode, I get into some of the highlights and lowlights from the ever-expanding galaxy of Star Wars trademarks. I remember eagerly waiting in line with my parents to see Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. It was May 1980, and I was a few months shy of 4 years old. Little did I know that 35 years ago, the world would be eagerly awaiting yet another Star Wars epic. The Star Wars movie saga began on May 25, 1977, and the Star Wars trademark saga began shortly thereafter. Let's hop on our landspeeders and take a tour of some Star Wars trademark highlights (and lowlights.) A Long Time Ago... The first trademark application including the words "STAR WARS" was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on July 27, 1977. The application listed two types of goods: comic magazines and toy action figures. The first Star Wars comic book came out in July 1977, so that was no problem. However, the action figures themselves weren't actually available at that point. In fact, despite the demand, the figures ended up not being ready by Christmas of that year, so, instead, kids were given an empty cardboard box that acted as a gift certificate. The toys were supposed to be delivered by June 1978. This is all very hard to imagine in today's instant on-demand world. By the way, that empty box is now very valuable. As of this writing, one of them is for sale on eBay for $7,995. Interestingly, the first record of a Star Wars-related trademark filing was an application by Lucasfilm to register THE FORCE for t-shirts. That one was filed on July 14, 1977. Shortly after those initial applications, the STAR WARS trademarks started rolling in...posters (had that), t-shirts (that too, of course), action playsets (ditto), and chewing gum (I think I missed out on the gum)...watches, paint sets, lunch boxes, socks and pajamas (trust me, I was looking pretty cool), board games and puzzles... And, of course, "Entertainment Services-Namely, the Production and Distribution of Motion Pictures." The Galaxy Expands Of course Lucasfilm and its associated companies sought trademark protection for all the most well-known characters: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Yoda, and so on. But over time, they cast a wider net. Eventually they obtained trademark registrations (many of which have expired) for obscure characters such as Prune Face, Tooth Face, and Sy Snootles & the Bebo Band (the band playing at Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi, of course). They registered not just Wicket the Ewok (that registration was for shampoo; after all, who wouldn't want a glossy coat of Ewok fur?), and the same character under his full name, Wicket W. Warrick, but also Willy the Ewok. Yes, even the characters from the not very good 1985 TV movie Ewoks: The Battle for Endor made the cut. And speaking of not very good, I'll just leave this screen shot from the USPTO here for you to enjoy: Star Wars Snacks Sadly, there's no trademark registration on file for Rootleaf Stew, which is what Yoda was cooking when he first met Luke in The Empire Strikes Back. An actual recipe for the stew was created by Chef Craig Claiborne for a 1983 NPR radio drama. It looks pretty good. And also, why isn't NPR doing any cool sci-fi radio dramas nowadays? Enough with actual news coverage and public affairs programming; I want my tax dollars going towards more Star Wars stuff. Lucasfilm used to have a registration for A NEW FORCE AT BREAKFAST, the tagline for the 1980's C-3PO'S breakfast cereal. Not much of a breakfast eater? That's OK, maybe you'll enjoy some wine from SKYWALKER VINEYARDS. Non-Traditional Trademarks Lucasfilm has protected not just the names, but also the shapes of some of its iconic characters, including R2-D2 and C-3PO. They've also protected some of the distinctive sounds associated with Star Wars, such as the sound of a lightsaber being activated, which is described as "a crescendo beginning with a snapping sound followed by a hiss sound" (click here to listen) and Darth Vader's labored breathing, described as "the sound of rhythmic mechanical human breathing created by breathing through a scuba tank regulator" (click here to listen.) The Saga Continues Earlier this year, Lucasfilm began filing trademark applications for STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS. But of course, that won't be the end of the Star Wars saga, not by a long shot. STAR WARS ROGUE ONE (which takes place between Episodes III and IV) will be released in December 2016, followed by Episode VII, Episode VIII, and more to come. You can be sure that Lucasfilm will continue to keep things busy at both the box office and the trademark office. And I'll keep you posted when any Star Wars trademark news appears on my radar. Until then, fly casual, and MAY THE 4th BE WITH YOU. Thanks for Checking Out Products of the Mind! If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the top and bottom of this page. Also, please consider taking the few seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes. They’re very helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and I read every one. Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live. Here are instructions on how to subscribe, rate, and review the show in iTunes. The Credits As always, the music for this episode was provided by Le Chateau. The track name is “Bury You.” Go buy it on Soundcloud This episode and these show notes © 2015 David Lizerbram

'Cooking is what makes us human'. Flickr Ruth Reichl MWF Ruth Reichl, the former restaurant critic of The New York Times and author of best-selling gourmet memoirs Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples, is known for describing, in vivid detail, how food can define us. While in Australia this week, to discuss her first novel Delicious! at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, Reichl talks with food researcher Isabelle de Solier about why food really matters, the social contract of inviting people to dinner, “industrial food” and the importance of getting people back into the kitchen. Ruth Reichl will be appearing at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 August. Details here. Read more coverage of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Full transcript Isabelle de Solier (IDS): My name is Isabelle de Solier and welcome to The Conversation podcast. I’m speaking with food critic Ruth Reichl, who’s in Australia for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival where she will be discussing her first novel Delicious! and sharing tips on the art of food writing and restaurant criticism. Ruth, welcome. Let me start by asking you about the significance of food in our lives. What’s your response when people say, “it’s just food”? Why does food matter? Ruth Reichl (RR): Oh that’s such a big question. The quickest way to answer this is when I went for a tour through San Quentin Prison, they told me that they made sure that, in this high security prison, they had really good food because all riots in prisons started in the cafeteria. And the truth is that food is the primary concern of people, you need food and water to exist and it drives just about everything else in our lives. It drives our social relations, it drives our politics, it drives the way we connect to each other, it drives the environment. And if you don’t care about food, you ultimately really don’t care about life. You can not care about flavour, which would be a shame because you would be denying yourself a great pleasure. But to not care about food, to not think about food, to not think about what it means today that half the world has too much to eat and the other half doesn’t have enough to eat is to really not understand the major problems of the world. And down the road, I mean as we’re speaking, I mean we’re in like, one of the most horrific times that I can think of, certainly in my lifetime, I mean there are horrible things happening all over the world. The Middle East is exploding, America at the moment is having race problems, but that’s nothing compared to the coming issues we are going to be having with water. You know, if you don’t think about those things, you’re really denying what’s important in life. IDS: I think part of the critique often directed at food culture today is that it epitomises consumerism, and in the research that I did with amateur foodies for my book, Food and the Self, I found that producing food, in terms of cooking it was more important to them, and held a higher value for them than just consuming it in restaurants. I’d like to know what your thoughts are on this and if you think there’s been a return to cooking and production in food culture as opposed to more of an obsession with restaurants and consumption in the 80s. RR: Well, I think you can divide this in two ways. If you think about producing food, is there a return to gardening? Yes. Is there a return to young people being interested in farming, which I mean, we’re losing farmers at an incredible rate, now we have a generation of smart young people who are interested in farming again. That’s all to the good. Are we losing cooking? Sadly, we are. You know, I’m kind of shocked at how little knowledge young people have about how to produce food and I feel like one of the real things that we need to be doing is getting people back into the kitchen. Getting people comfortable, I mean, cooking is easy! It is my belief that it is man’s natural activity. You know, it’s like what makes us human. We cook, they don’t. Cooking is also the most generous impulse. I mean people cook as a form of an expression of love, I mean it’s a generosity to want to feed people and I am really hoping for a time when this sort of foodie obsession with running to the newest restaurant will come around to an obsession with feeding people. One of the reasons I stopped being a restaurant critic was that I was increasingly disturbed by the amount of private time people were spending in public spaces. It’s a very different thing to meet people in a restaurant. To say “meet me at a restaurant for a meal”, than to say “come to my house for dinner.” Because when you say come to my house for dinner you are not just saying come to my house, I’m going to cook for you, you are sharing your life, you are opening yourself up, you are becoming vulnerable. I mean, people come to your house and they see if you are messy, if you have good taste, if your children have manners, if your animals are disciplined, it’s a kind of vulnerability that we are no longer ready to risk. So, I’m hoping for people to start cooking again for so many reasons. More than just it’s a wonderful thing to know how to cook, it’s a very pleasurable thing, there’s nothing nicer than having people around your table, there’s nothing more comforting than knowing that you know how to feed your family on very little money, which you need to know how to cook to do. But it’s bigger than that. The whole social contract that happens around a table, it’s very different in a restaurant than it is in a home. IDS: One of the main changes in the sphere of restaurant reviewing in recent times has been the emergence of online amateur food criticism, and in particular, food bloggers. How do you view amateur restaurant bloggers? RR: You know there are many ways of doing a restaurant review. Restaurant criticism is no different to any other kind of criticism. The primary purpose of a good critic is to enhance the experience for the reader. So if you read a really good critique and you go to a museum, you see that art in a different way. And with restaurant criticism, with a really good critique, you go to that restaurant prepared to experience that food in a richer way. You’ve learned something about, you know, where this food comes from, where the chef comes from, where it fits into the history of restaurants. The kind of blogging reviews that happen are essentially consumer reports. They’re … go spend your money here or don’t spend your money there. And what I like about them is that as a consumer of those kind of critiques, you need to use your own judgement. You need to be able to triangulate between: this is probably a friend of the chef, it’s his mother, this is a disgruntled person who is probably a jerk. You need to like read them and bring your own intelligence to it. And the other side of it is that it has made the professional critics better. I mean I think, certainly in the United States right now, we have the best restaurant critics we have ever had. I mean they are the most knowledgeable, the best writers, the most interesting group of restaurant critics we have ever had. Because restaurant critics used to able to just be consumer reporters. I mean if you look at Craig Claiborne, who essentially invented restaurant criticism in the United States, all he was really doing was saying was “spend your money here, don’t spend your money there”, and if you look at the evolution of it and you look at say, Jonathan Gold who was the only American ever to win a Pulitzer for restaurant criticism. I mean what he brings to it is so incredible. He’s comparing food to music, he’s putting in context, if he’s eaten, you know if he’s writes about a taco he’s comparing it to every other taco in LA. IDS: When you were working as a restaurant critic, especially the New York Times, you were often described, in terms of the cliche, as having the power to make or break a restaurant. How did you handle this kind of power and responsibility as a critic? What kind of ethics do you think structured your reviewing? RR: If you believe that criticism is important, and that’s a big “if”, but if you believe it’s important, it’s important to be fair. And being fair means saying something is bad when it’s bad. Although always acknowledging that what you are talking about is basically something that’s going on in your mouth, I mean it’s like, it’s your idea of bad. But what I kept, a photograph of a young couple who only got to go out once a year. And they saved their money all year and they went out for a really great meal and they went out on their anniversary. And I imagined that I had written a very nice review of a place that wasn’t very good, and that they went and spent their money at this restaurant and were very disappointed and they were my reader. And my responsibility was to them, not to the restaurant. They were the people who were paying my salary. And every time I was tempted to pull my punches, I’d look at that photograph and think: they’re going to be disappointed. And, it’s hard to do. I mean you don’t want to, if you are a normal human being, your inclination is not to be be mean and to close restaurants and to put people out of work. On the other hand, that couple, it’s not fair to them if you’re saying this restaurant is good when it just isn’t. IDS: Another thing when you worked as a restaurant critic for The New York Times, you decided to wear disguises when visiting restaurants so you wouldn’t be recognised and given preferential treatment. Some of your identities included Molly, a frumpy blonde and Brenda, a bohemian redhead. How were your various characters treated differently, and what do you think it revealed about prejudice towards different kinds of people in society? RR: Well, certainly Betty, my frumpy little old lady, was treated like dirt in every restaurant she went to. But the other thing that it taught me was that we’re basically in control of how the world perceives us. Betty was a little old lady, but so was my mother - who I also turned myself into - and she knew, that if you are going to go to an expensive restaurant, you dress up. You demand respect. And part of, for me, I mean it was fascinating, because I had never really cared about clothing or what I looked like and I didn’t really feel like I was in control of it. But doing all of these disguises was so odd because I would put on all of these disguises but inside I was still me. But what happens is that people respond to what they’re seeing. And suddenly, I would respond to their response. And so suddenly I would be wild Brenda, who was lovely. I mean she was just the loveliest person, I mean my family liked Brenda better than they liked me! She was so nice, I mean nothing ever bothered her. She was the ultimate “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”, and I realised that we are in control of how we get treated. And you know, if you go to a fancy restaurant in shabby clothes, they don’t want to see you in that front seat. I mean restaurants are kind of theatre, and to me, you know it’s a contract with the restaurant. If you’re going out to spend a lot of money in a restaurant, their deal with you is that they take your major money and in return they will give you the illusion, if only for a few hours, that you are a privileged person. But if you want that experience, you have to dress the part. And so you know the contract goes a little bit both ways. IDS: And did your experience of playing those different characters influence you when you were writing you new novel Delicious!? RR: Absolutely. I mean when I decided I wanted to write fiction, well actually an editor came to me and said, “You should write fiction” and I said, “well, you know, I’m a memoirist”, I’m not sure I can write fiction. And she said, “oh come on Ruth! What do you think you were doing when you wore all those disguises?” She said, “you weren’t writing fiction but you were living fiction. All you have to do is figure out what character you want to be and instead of being her, put her on the page”. And she said, “who do you want to be?” And I said, “I want to be 21!” [laughs], and so Billy is 21. IDS: You said that your Jewish identity is very important to you. How has that shaped your relationship with food? RR: My mother was the antithesis of a Jewish cook, the sort of stereotype of a Jewish cook is someone who cooks things to death. My mother barely cooked things. I mean, she’s put a turkey in the oven and pull it out ten minutes later and in tell you it was cooked! And I did not grow up with classic Jewish food, and in fact, don’t have much taste for it. I grew up in a very sort of Jewish intellectual household, that maybe because my parents were Jews, they almost deliberately disdained food. They were, like “food isn’t important to us at all. We don’t care”. And so in response to their not caring, I care enormously. I certainly don’t come from any religious background, but my parents were very strongly cultural New York Jews. I realise now because so many of my friends are not Jewish, what a small world, I mean, I grew up in publishing, and my parents’ friends were, pretty much, all Jews. It’s odd to think about because none of them were religious. You know, I went to a public school in Greenwich village, the schools were empty on the Jewish holidays. IDS: The contemporary obsession with food and popular culture in everyday life comes at a time when rates of obesity in the US and Australia are extremely high with 25% of adults in Australia and 35% of adults in the US are obese, and projected to rise further. What role, if any, do you think the food media has to play in educating people, not only about the pleasures of food, but also about health and nutrition? RR: My own bias on this is less with the notion of health and nutrition and more with the notion of get rid of industrial foods. I don’t think that people need to think of food as medicine to be healthy. But I do think that clearly, we have run an experiment on two generations now, where we have allowed our food to be industrialised and constantly refined, become worse and worse and worse. And it’s very clear that, I don’t know if it’s the antibiotics, but you have to think about the antibiotics that are used in the meats in the United States. You know 80% of the antibiotics in the United States are used on perfectly healthy animals, and it’s basically to fatten them up. Well is that fattening us up? The jury is out on that. Is the fact that people think it’s perfectly normal to drink 64 ounces of soft drinks? You know, is the fact that kids get these huge empty calories in soft drinks, that they’re eating cereal that is filled with chemicals, that we allow children to be advertised to, who are sitting ducks. Kids are plonked in front of the television and there are these ads about terrible foods and these ads are being streamed at them constantly. They have no way of filtering them at all. Eating we know is learned behaviour. Japanese children do not grow up liking rice and fish because they have a natural inclination, that’s what they’re fed. Children learn to like what they’re fed and so my real bias on this is that I wish we had less sort of “touchy-feely” media about food and more a hard hitting: this is a political issue, we need the government to step in on this. The food lobby is enormous in the United States and we need to activate people because these things are only going to change when people get up on their two feet and start demanding that the government institute laws about what we are allowed to be fed. What children are allowed to be fed, what children are permitted to watch. I mean we really need to take control of this. IDS: So the industrialised food system is sort of the key? RR: I think so. I don’t think it matters how much fat and eggs and butter you eat if you are eating real food. But I think we, and we in the media, really need to, it is really important for us, to just keep going over this again and again and again and again, and making things transparent. You know we’ve done a very good job in the United States of making “cafos”, confined animal facilities, 10 years ago, nobody knew that animals were being tortured in animal factories, people know that now. If you choose to eat industrialised pigs and that those animals have miserable lives. We really need to keep pushing for transparency in everything. IDS: Do you think the shift towards local food is important as part of that? RR: I think it’s very important. I think that you know for one thing keeping money inside the community is very important. The more we globalise food and, you know, make it cheaper for people to buy food from China than food from the farmer next door, the more we are making our own environments worse places. We need farmers. We need food to be local. The safest way to eat is to know the people who raised your food. You know, one of the big problems we are finding with these huge food epidemics of food-born illnesses is that it’s very hard to trace. You know, what sickened these people? Where do these animals come from? Where did that cantaloupe come from that made people sick? If you are buying, you know, if someone in you family gets sick and you bought food from the farmer next door, it’s very easy to trace. IDS: As you spoke about earlier, there’s 800 million people in the world who don’t have enough food to eat, and it’s not just a problem confined to the developing world, but also one on our doorstep with 5% of households in Australia and 15% in the United States of people experiencing food insecurity. RR: I think it’s more than that. I think it’s one in five children in the United States goes to bed hungry. One in five. IDS: What do you see as ways of addressing this? RR: It’s such a big problem and we all know that it’s largely a problem in the third world. It’s largely a problem of distribution, it’s not that there’s not enough food. In western culture, one of the ways you address it is that people need to learn to cook again. You know, if you know how to cook, it’s easy to live on things like rice and beans, which are very cheap. And if you know how to balance protein. If you think that you need meat at every meal, you create a system of scarcity. So, part of it is teaching people to eat, part of it is, waste is an enormous issue and not just on the macro level but, within households. I mean the amount of food, there are estimates that, you know 50% of food in the states gets essentially wasted. And part of it is, we need to teach people to cook on a household level. People are just throwing things out. One of the things that is really encouraging is that chefs all over the world are starting to address these issues. When I first started reviewing restaurants there were no second harvests, no food pantry people. Now there are people who go and collect food from restaurants for redistribution. But again, I can’t speak to Australia, but the biggest issue in the United States is taxation policy. It’s like we tax the wrong things. So meat is subsidised, sugar is subsidised. If you changed that and you started subsidising healthy food. I mean there’s a reason why when you go to McDonald’s – it is cheap to buy a hamburger and more expensive to buy a salad. And that’s because of our tax policy. So, so much of this needs to be changed at a government level. It’s very hard for individual people to do anything other than lobby the government. Isabelle de Solier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Dan Saladino meets the world authority on the food of Mexico, the British born writer Diana Kennedy.Diana Kennedy's life reads like an adventure story. Born in Loughton, Essex in 1923, after serving in the land army she set off on a journey that would take her to Canada, Jamaica and Puerto Rico. She stopped off in Haiti, met the New York Times correspondent Paul Kennedy, fell in love and they moved to Mexico.Soon after arriving she became fascinated by Mexican food. A maid looking after the home was also a cook and the regional dishes made Diana Kennedy curious about the ingredients and recipes of other regions of Mexico.After Paul Kennedy died in 1966 Diana found herself living in New York, with no income and an uncertain future. The Food Editor of The New York Times, Craig Claiborne encouraged her to use her knowledge of Mexican food and give cooking lessons.To research recipes and find ingredients she'd travel to remote parts of Mexico, into villages, to markets and into kitchens with domestic cooks to learn more about traditional foods. That research has continued for five decades.It has produced nine books, and a body of work that is now regarded as the most authoritative account of Mexico's cuisines ever created. In the programme Diana Kennedy explains her life in food.In the programme food writer and editor of Swallow magazine, James Casey visits Diana Kennedy in her home in Michoacan to see how she's also created a garden containing varieties of fruit and vegetables from all over Mexico.Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

This week’s episode of A Taste of the Past is a dedication to Craig Claiborne, legendary New York Times restaurant critic. Linda Pelaccio is talking with Tom McNamee, author of the recent Craig Claiborne-focused book, The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat. When Craig Claiborne began his career, there was no outlet for critical review of restaurant and food culture. Tune in to hear about how Craig Claiborne transformed The New York Times’ food coverage into the critical lens that it is known to be today. Hear about how he brought the star rating system for restaurants to the United States, and how he introduced American households to multitudes of ethnic cuisines. If you think some restaurants are extravagantly priced, listen in to hear about a meal that Mr. Claiborne shared with chef Pierre Franey that cost roughly $20,000 in today’s currency. Hear more about the fascinating life and work of Craig Claiborne in this week’s episode of A Taste of the Past! This episode was sponsored by White Oak Pastures “I think it’s important to realize what the American context was at the time. It was just shortly after World War II, and industrialized food was in a huge upsurge… it was an absolute wasteland in American food!” “He was bringing strange things to The New York Times’ readership immediately in his first column.” “He kept constantly bringing in the ‘outer world’, and therefore a lot of things that we take for granted [he introduced in our culture].” — Tom McNamee on A Taste of the Past

Dorothy Cann Hamilton brings Chef’s Story, formerly a show on PBS, to Heritage Radio Network! Tune in to the inaugural episode as she is joined by internationally recognized French chef, television personality, and author Jacques Pepin. Hear his story of living through the French Liberation and learning about food from his mother and grandmother. From his earliest food memories to his rise to fame, learn how Jacques Pepin became one of the most beloved and well-respected food personalities of his time. This program was sponsored by Hearst Ranch. “You used to learn through osmosis, because a chef would never tell you anything. Now, things are different.” “Craig Claiborne single handedly created the vocabulary for food criticism in America.” “I had never been in a supermarket before I came to this country. They didn’t exist [in France]…. as a chef, I want to buy good product above everything else.” “If you go into the business to become famous, you’re bound to have some profound disappointments.” –chef Jacques Pepin on Chef’s Story