Reporters With Recipes

good morning everyone I'm Jessica flood managing director of live events and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to the first ever New York Times food festival this is a festival as big and as exciting as the city that it's inspired it all this weekend there have been food tastings live cooking demonstrations and more just down the block in Bryant Park last week and into next we hosted seven evenings of exclusive dinners at ten restaurants picked as but by our fat our favorite food critic Pete Wells and here at the time Center the talks a series of discussions with the most interesting and vital voices of the food scene today following today's talk we invite you to stay and enjoy a cup of coffee from Joe and visit our festival lounge downstairs in the hall you can grab a drink at the festival bar and watch the other talks live streamed taste a scoop of the flavor of record an ice cream made by ample hills and recommended by the times I'd like to give a special thanks to our sponsors a presenting sponsor MasterCard and our major sponsor ubereats our wellness sponsor yogi tea and our event sponsors bullet Don Julio and Smirnoff Seltzer our New York Times cooking stage sponsor Sub Zero wolf and Cove and our supporting sponsors AARP of New York buddy our spices Deloitte Razzie Joe company and REI and now to our program a word of warning the next 60 minutes are going to make you hungry and and that's because the cooking columnist Melissa Clarke and Alison Roman will be discussing how they come up with recipes that become Times readers favorites whether it be the creme brulee french toast or hash tag the stoom it sounds like a dream job but if you would like to volunteer any day of the week to do dish duty you're more than welcome so please welcome Melissa Clarke and Alison Roman along with our food editor Sam Sifton [Music] [Music] I was raised right good morning and welcome to the second morning of the first annual New York Times food festival which were overjoyed to bring to you a couple of housekeeping notes before we get going number one Allyson Roman will be signing copies of her new book nothing fancy downstairs afterwards so you can go down there and meet her in person there are also copies of one of Melissa's many books down there dinner an instant and yeah I got a book down there too so and I'll be signing at 1:00 so I'll see you all there then welcome Alison welcome Melissa we're here today to talk a little bit about how these two women do their jobs for the New York Times but before we do that I think we should just lay the groundwork and ask how you got here how does one get this amazing job we'll start with you Melissa you know it's funny I was just Alison I were just talking about this in the hallway we're like how did you tell the story you know there's so many ways to tell a story so I could say okay well you know I started cooking you know when I was a kid my parents are big time foodies they were Julia Child they they did the Julie Julia thing like back in the 70s you know they follow they went through Julia Child's cookbook and I was there I was absorbing all of this I was eating all of this and so I was always cooking just because if you wanted to have time with my parents I wanted of time I had to be in the kitchen and I had to be doing something like you know peeling onions or you know taking the leaves off the time branches so that's like the one answer but then also I was in the right place at the right time you know I knew a guy and my best friend went to India and she said you want to work for this guy Rick Flast he said the New York Times he needs an assistant it's like yeah yeah yes I do and so that you know so it's but it was also it was having that love of food always you know just always and then when the opportunity came and they said you want you know he's writing this cookbook with pf' Renee remember Pierre for an a yes and so I got to help edit that cookbook and you know my job was to make sure all the ingredients and the ingredient lists were actually used in the recipe which is a really important thing to do when you leave out the salt right it's a problem and then when he so he was working at the times while writing this book and when he got to the time when he I guess the food section wasn't a thing until when was that Sam oh good night hopped out of living 93 something like exactly so he called me up after I hadn't heard from him in a year and then the the section got started and he called me up and he said do you want to write a little column called the food chain where okay imagine this people actually wrote physical letters they wrote letters so they smelled them to the times and I would open the letters and I would answer cooking questions like how do you beat egg whites without them deflating and I think that was the first one I ever wrote and I would give the answer in a little science behind it and I would get a byline and I remember the first the first one my mother called me up and she was like oh she's like did they actually pay you for that I was like no mom I had to send them a check for $25 she believed me for a minute and you know and then I just kept doing it and I kept you know different editors can you know before you were the editor there were many different editors and every time they asked me to do an article I was like yes I can do it I would drop everything and then in 2012 I went on staff which was a great day for us Allison how about you oh that's all yeah I mean my parents definitely cooked growing up we were equal parts like order and cook at home type of thing but they cooked like the same three things my dad loved a girl sausages he still won't let me touch the girl it's like I don't know he's like it's the one thing I do better than you and I was like you don't but okay and my mom you know makes like trial with a thing and rice pilaf I grew up in California so it's a lot of artichokes and asparagus but it was never a thing that I thought that I would do so I started cooking in high school after school as a way to not do homework where it was just far more interesting to me to like learn how to make a tomato sauce then do any homework and if my parents asked me did you do your homework I said no but dinner's ready okay I deal but all right that's pretty good so I went to I left home went to college and started reading a lot of cookbooks I was reading like the French Laundry cookbook and like Michel bra like not necessarily home-cooked cookbooks I had never even opened a Julia Child book I went straight for really advanced books I wasn't necessarily cooking from but I became really enamored of restaurant culture through these books and decided that I was gonna leave college and try to go work in a restaurant and I was gonna go to culinary school is gonna do all this stuff and then I bang down the back of the door of a restaurant that I wanted to work at to talk to the chef and say hey I'm gonna go to culinary school will you please give me a job so I can you know pay for school and get working experience and he's like yes but I would say don't go to culinary school he's like I'll pay you 750 an hour to cut marshmallows in a windowless room and you know marry the 40 grand because you might hate it and he was right I could have very well hated it but I didn't I loved it and so I started working in restaurants my parents were not thrilled but it worked out so I feel like I can we can all laugh about it now and so I worked in restaurants in Los Angeles and then in San Francisco for five or so years and then decided I was gonna move to New York for three months and then that was 10 years ago so I never lacked started working for Momofuku and I moved here because I needed a job milk bar had just opened so it was like oh cool like five staff person bakery just like a bunch of women making cookies and bandanas and then in the year and a half that I worked there had exploded into like four locations and commissary kitchen and it was like a big huge business and a you know different thing and I decided that I was gonna try to leave to figure out what else I could do in food cuz I knew I didn't want to work in restaurants anymore it's it I did love it but it is intense and so I met somebody I just kind of started telling everybody I met I want to do something in food I don't know what that is I'll do anything and so I did a lot of weird odds and then jobs like weird catering gigs and private dinners and whatever and I finally got connected with the food editor at bone Appetit and he was like oh do you have experience recipe testing I was like absolutely I did not have any and but I knew how to cook and I figured working in a restaurant is like recipe developing right you're coming up with new dishes all the time it's just you're not writing them for a publication which each publication has their own style so you're always gonna be learning that anyway and I it was like I fake it till you make it kind of thing but I loved it and was like this is where I want to be and so I was there for four years and then I left and as soon as I left I got a call from Emily Weinstein who's the food editor and she's like do you want to write recipes for the times I was like yes I do it was like a very surreal pinch me moment and felt very lucky and then about two years into that I got a shiny column yes you do love when we read it and cook from it hey Sam can I ask you a question it was so loud I can't help it I'm a journalist too yeah I realize I don't even know you know I know you were you've been at the Times for forever you you know this is you are a journalist but then how did you transition to food like was that always a thing for you it was I always kept it in my back pocket I cooked for money and in college and became enamored of the restaurant lifestyle which is not so different from at least my imagining of the journalistic one it there's a lot of adrenaline and stress and camaraderie and I loved restaurant work at love newspaper work and I always kept that interest in food in my back pocket and I actually came to The Times on what was then the dining desk and I worked there for a couple of years before moving to culture where I ran the arts report then I was the restaurant critic then I moved to the National reporter in national news and then came back to food to launch NYT cooking [Applause] [Music] and I do it so I've always felt as a journalist that food is the one thing that I can approach anyone with to gain entry to their thinking about the world not everyone is interested in finance or sports or international news many of us are but not everyone everyone is interested in food even the people who say they're not and if you meet someone who says they're not interested in food ask them what they had for breakfast and maybe off off to the races now Melissa that was artfully done on your part but we're gonna switch back recipes come into the world of the times and into the world of MIT cooking in various ways right what are they like we've got so Allison writes recipes for the times and I'm gonna ask you how you do that you do as well but there are many other sources for the recipes that come in can you talk a little bit about those I know you do this - we were that's all I can do workshops to me and we work or not just chefs with hope with home cooks with people passionate about a particular dish and I love that part of the job one thing that I did before I started full-time at the times was I co-authored cookbooks with chefs and this was in like 300 million oh yeah 40 years for a thrilling thing about that is it was like a tutorial it was like okay Danielle blue you know show me how to make beef bourguignon and he did and it was this incredible experience I was learning from each chef their specialty and what the best thing I learned though was that everybody does it differently like there's no one right way to do it which is incredibly freeing it's like okay so I can do it my way and it's still gonna turn out well and that was great so your way though is the way of our audience it's the home cook it is definitely the Lazy was the can i watch fewer dishes way what I think about that's a good way of looking at it but it's self effacing I mean the truth of the matter is and I don't know if you two agree with me but it seems to me there's no one worse at writing a recipe for the home cook than a shot it's like ovens don't go that low they would but they can't make it so how do you handle that I do it left now I did it more when I was at Bon Appetit and I have a co-author in one cookbook with chefs and I'll never do it again you're saying done it repeatedly but it was just taking okay what would I do but I think having that experience either with chefs or in restaurants knowing how to do something and then how you can do something or very different and it's very useful of using these restaurant techniques to get the perfect result but making it flexible for the home cook and knowing that when they say Hotel pan oh we can scale it and use a 9 by 13 baking dish then get the similar result so kind of using your translation skills at all times ok so the way we deal with recipes at the times is it arrives in our inbox let's say and it has been developed you've worked it out but still we test it right what is the relationship between the recipe writer or developer or translator is a good way of putting it and that tester for you because I test my own so you do you double down my double test I have a recipe tester who comes into my house so they are testing yeah but it's like I mean I'm I'm in complete control of it you know I want to taste it so I have a um so I do you know I work out of my home and you work out of your home because everything we do at the Times is geared for home cooks home kitchens and honestly when you work in a professional space and you probably saw this - phone app it's like the stoves are different the equipment is the internet shopping for you yes for you and you have all the space in the world yeah yeah that sounds like a fantasy yeah it's great I mean you've probably seen our kitchens if not theirs you know you can just normally internet but their regular spaces yeah and so I'm always so working in my space is really important normal normal stove and normal pots and pans and then I'll cook something I don't know if depends on how many times I need to do it could be twice it could be fourteen times before I get to a point where I pass it off to a tester and then the tester comes in and I don't really careful I write it as carefully as I can but I I try not to talk to her well you know it's not like I'm like I'm in the other room writing my article and she tests it and I like to see how her dish which always does differs for mine and then how I can tighten the language right you know it's so extraordinary really I always send it out because I'm not these guys in the least well yeah I'm cooking at home though and then at the end of the day I got to take this recipe and give it to someone who's gonna make it in a kitchen that I have no experience with and and I'm really interested in the feedback that comes from that because at the end of the day if you come to the times for a recipe and it doesn't work we're kind of jerks mm-hmm so it's like a trust based thing I think that with the site and also with cookbooks you're only gonna want to be willing to pay money for it would be a subscription or purchasing a book if you trust that person and so writing recipes is very much a conversation about building trust because you messed up one time and people are like forget this person their recipes don't work right even if it's just one mistake I feel like it's very rare you're given a second chance because there's so many efficiency you'll just find somebody else to cook from or another place to subscribe to so it is true that I don't work from home I work from cubicle upstairs where I tap out newsletters as if my life depended on it four times a week and then I go home and cook for my family and take curious notes I'm really interested in how you structure and I think we all are interested in how you structure your days as this journalist who's creating recipes for the New York Times how does that work structure is an interesting word it's a journey every day into the life of a person that works for themselves or works from home or you have a family and you know I have a lot of emails I have I tried to structure and so I have cooking days and writing days because if I try to do both in one day it's I feel not focused in either one cooking is infinitely easier for me but I realize if I have a lot of recipes develop I'll find a lot of stuff to write about and sort of similarly what's writing if I have deadlines I've just got to be in the kitchen and it's kind of like I used one against the other to kind of act as sort of a relief so if I say okay today's the day that I'm just writing then it allows me the full 12 hours to spend half of it scrolling Twitter losing the other have actually writing something smart maybe so I feel like unless I separate them it's not good I try to do like three days at a time especially for cooking and developing depending on the story if it's I shoot my column in batches so it's six or so recipes at a time that I'm filing so that we can shoot over two days and that you know I'll need a certain amount of time for I can't really spread it out mmm-hmm a few days so it's like I put on my calendar no calls no meetings and I tried to make that space otherwise okay awesome just absolute nightmare now Melissa you are under a lot of deadline pressure yourself how do you how do you put it together like thinking about the fact that I have a really big story due tomorrow but think about the writers room sure Helen's gonna be a very important story and I'm gonna actually write it as soon as I'm done with the fest no no this is gonna be a really you're gonna love this sir this is a story about like where are we to make of shrimp are we supposed to it's the most popular seafood in the u.s. and like is it gonna kill us is it harvested by slaves like well I I denture we feel guilty you're gonna answer all these questions all right now but I didn't wait all the show beginning okay but it's hard so I do the same thing though is that I have to divide up the time because I feel like they're different parts of my brain totally and if I try to cook and try to write in the same day I don't do either one of them well so I I mean and it's really scary the days where I'm actually you know under deadline and writing I don't ever move I need one of those things that you know beeps um I need like a Fitbit or something say I get up and walk because I don't move I sit there on my couch and just teaching you how to do that really well yeah because I do like it you know I tend to maybe right at the last minute so it's like I know my deadline is looming and that keeps me rooted in the seat but then when I'm cooking it's like it's a whole other thing and I have to say those are maybe it's slightly more joyous days because you know I'm eating all day which is really nice and if I can you know I try to get my my daughter comes home from school at like 3:30 and I try to get her involved when she gets home sometimes she's into it if it's cookies she's into it but it also leaves me room you know my husband also works from home so it leaves me room one on cooking days I can I can make him lunch you know which is just so nice and I can I can call my mother while I'm cooking and you know and just so I feel like those days are and it's a different creative process because on the one hand usually on days what I'm testing so the way I do my recipes is I'm cooking most of the recipes start out of something I make for dinner and if it tastes food I write it down if it doesn't taste good I don't write it down and then I take that scratch pad and I turn it into a recipe so the creative work is actually already done and just in the testing phase interesting yeah so for much of the audience certainly for me that's not how it works what what I'm making for dinner is what you told me to make in New York or it's me trying to figure out how to make the chef's notes make sense so that I know what it's supposed to taste like and I can kind of fake it into reality and that's a different a different process I often try to divide the world into those people who can close their eyes and see the flavors and do the creative work that you do so well and those of us who are just tasked monkeys who can follow directions and and how they are good cooks but but are not creative masterminds although we all make our recipes our own at the end of the day after a few times making it but talk to me Alison I'll start with you talk to me about how that creative process works is it I know you don't want to do it but I'm demanding like you can say it's just like it's magic you have one request now I think that it's similarly it's a lot of it comes from what I feel like cooking at the time the difference like so I live alone and when I am cooking for myself it's generally not anything that I am it's like a bowl of cottage cheese with like cucumber and I like writing day meals and my solo dinner meals are not exciting or anything right hum about or write for the New York Times about it's more when I have people over and I'm cooking for friends or you know inviting neighbors over or something like that cooking for friends who had kids and bringing them food for freezing and things like that so it's like very service oriented and so I have people to give feedback almost immediately which is really nice but honestly I feel like creatively the where I get almost every single idea or thought or anything is just by leaving New York well hey like even if it means going upstate or going to a different state or leaving the country eating anywhere and just seeing how food is prepared in different places is the best way to be inspired because even if it's the way they cut a vegetable or use an ingredient in a way that I haven't previously seen there's so much out there and yes in New York we have it all kind of but I think that just for me personally taking myself out of my routine even if I'm not eating it like a nice restaurant or whatever just not being in my typical everyday is the easiest way for my brain to kind of blank slate and feel refreshed in this virus see aren't you glad I asked the question come on so that is in essence reporting right that is the that is the job of the New York Times food reporter is to go out into the world and experience different things things that are outside of our usual can and then figure out how to bring it bring it to the wait is that I know that's true free sometimes but then there are all these times you're coming and you're like I was just doing this thing and boom huge head how does that happen second news it's just a lot of just I mean the same thing except that instead of you know leaving because you know I'm kind of rooted here especially with the family but it's like going to the farmers market and seeing and you think we're just going to the supermarket like going to the supermarket and being like oh my god what is this you know strange thing that I've never seen before I need to buy it but in other places I read a lot of menus online so this is you know if a new restaurant opens or if someone said they went to a restaurant while I'm talking to them on the phone I'm actually looking at the menu and every time I read a menu like how do those flavors work together and if I can't picture it I have to either go and get the dish I have to make something like it because I just have this sort of it it's a skepticism but like if it works at its genius I mean what are some trying to think of some of the combinations that I just didn't think before black garlic became a thing remember your first looks like black garlic fermented mushy I don't know about this and then you have it and you have it with something like chicken which is just so easy to live love and you have a roast chicken with black garlic and then you're like okay I get it and now I couldn't create a recipe for it but what if you can't get black garlic right because and so then how do I get those similar kind of flavors using regular garlic right and then it goes from that that's so interesting and awesome now the experience of everyone out here and my experience well no our experience is a little different right we make it our business at the new york times at MIT cooking in this newsletter that I write and Emily white seems to newsletter as well to say like here's how to set up your life for a great week of cooking cook this on Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday midweek cooking we're here to help you but of course we're not cooking that way and more important for the purposes of this next question we're not shopping that way and I'm I'm really interested in your relationship with the markets not just the like oh I went to the market and I saw these beautiful caballo squash came up with his recipe and it's the world of the internet like that's cool but but it's not real right so what is the how often are you in the market how are you think how do you stock up for testing how do you I mean the the taking a day to cook all day which sounds like a dream requires a lot of setup how do you manage it I think it starts with a well-stocked pantry like across the board just making sure that you always have certain things on hand because I'm sure you know there's nothing worse than having an idea thinking you're gonna cook through something and being like oh you know this would actually be really good with X instead of Y and then you're like I don't have that here I have to stop my process go to the store so hey my my apartment is essentially a grocery store I'm a I was telling somebody the other day that we should just have a game show or people just like a chopped but they have to come in and just cook with the stuff in my kitchen because there's a lot of weird stuff in there like a head of iceberg lettuce and half of a ham at all times no so I think it starts with having your basics and your ground covered and there's certain things that I always love cooking with that I would feel very naked developing without and so anytime I'm running low on those things I stock up and then in terms of grocery store I feel the same way Melissa does about feeling inspired just getting out into the grocery store at farmers market I try to shop where people are shopping so well yes we have access to really amazing specialty stores in New York and beautiful butchers and fish markets and specialty spices I try to shop it like my Brooklyn fair I live at Brooklyn Fair this is the short answer but I go to Whole Foods I order from Fresh Direct I go to regular places I go to key food I go to see town I want to know where people are actually shopping because if I'm only calling for ingredients in a recipe like this recipe only works if you're using the best eggs that's not really doing anybody a service because chances are you're not so I feel like if I start with almost like the lowest common denominator or like a very baseline ingredient if you're going above and beyond that you're gonna be really pleased because it's gonna be even better but I think that a good recipe should work with ingredients of kind of any quality excellent baseline key food yeah actually that's um Billy Asus I did a cookbook with him he was a former pastry chef at the White House and he said to me I remember we were at the farmers market together shopping and there are these little you know tristar's strawberries and they were so perfect and I said oh bill should we get these for the Strawberry thing we were making and he goes no we got to get at the supermarket once it's like you got to make sure it works with the supermarket strawberries because if they if they can get the choice are fantastic but if you can't it should still taste delicious it should still just wow everybody and I think about that a lot that's an excellent note from the sublime to the ridiculous your biggest recipe fail pick just one nobody who cooked it or no you dream this I dream this would be great and it is not great yeah I made this one cake about a bajillion times because I had an idea for an upside-down cake that would look like tie-dye on the bottom with like hibiscus or blood orange or whatever and I was like I will get this cake and after like try 18 I was like it's not in the cards or at least not this year and I kind of moved on but I still think about it all the time as wouldn't that be cool and the answer is yes it would be it wouldn't rule hopefully I'll figure it out one day I can't wait for the tie-dye up saying yeah very good but if you're like baking is the one for me to test it like you can salvage anything you know it's like if you just put some you know Turkish chili flakes olive oil and lemon on it it's gonna taste good if it's savory but when you have a cake or you have cookies or something if they're not right then it's just not gonna work right yeah and remember this is not on Melissa and we won't reveal the book but we were doing some recipes testing out of a new crop of course oh yes Melissa Melissa Clarke made this celebrated bread and yeah I got it it tasted like a couch thing about it was I actually I baked it the first time I was like I can't believe this bread is so bad so I baked it a second time I was like oh no actually I love that going back and back and back at these things that we want to work and it is interesting when they come out of of cookbooks you're both celebrated cookbook authors it's a it seems that the book publishing industry has a sort of different relationship with recipes than say does the times from from our point of view as reporters with recipes I I do love the experience of diving into a cookbook and see because the styles are completely different from the ones that we use in the paper and therefore different from the ones that you use because you all use MIT cooking and it's fun to translate those in into into our print don't you think yeah yeah sure I mean if it is interesting the style thing between cookbooks and recipes we remember the times they are different and I get like I kind of like I mean I've I'm used to the time style let's just say when my cookbook get her said can you please do this like you know my I get my back up and then I realize you know what it's all fine it doesn't really matter yeah however it's really I mean we remain rooted in time style I sometimes worry at peril Emily Weinstein often says that the recipe card on it on NYT cooking is like the atomic unit of our universe and it is the the headliner you know baked bread and then a top note that explains our reporting that went into the development of the recipe and then the ingredients and then the instructions and thus it has been for time immemorial and I wonder as Alison you and social media a lot all of us in a digital space a lot do you think that the recipe form is going to be different in 10 years is it going to be more visual is it going to remain the same are we gonna go to a sort of visual step by step about this all the time I think about like how can you reinvent a recipe how can you move that conversation forward but at the end of the day I well I think of of what I do or what we all do is like the intersection of entertainment and service I think for me personally service is gonna always prevail is the most an important part and I think that when writing cookbooks and when thinking of essa' pays to publish my main concern is are people gonna do this are people gonna want to do this can they do this and I think as soon as you over complicate things and the in the way that you're trying to be more helpful you're not and I think that we've seen a lot of that where it's like okay we're gonna add images in between steps and here's what it should look like and I think for most people it may be just me that feels overwhelming and there's almost like less information is more when you can give the right information I know so how are you know I feel like there is gonna be change and I think that it's I actually really welcome it I mean I don't know what's gonna stick right no I mean that's the thing it's like there's all these different things think about your grandmother's recipe that she wrote out on a little index card right and she know she put the amounts but not the technique or you see those old cookbooks where you know the recipe was like this big no that's the first New York Times cookbook actually in the late 19th century and you have to know all that stuff it's just assumed but the thing is people knew it they knew how to do it you are as a recipe writer you were putting yourself into a dialogue that with your audience oh it's already happening right and so the dialogue keeps changing people's skill sets change the equipment we have changes the ingredients we have changed our tastes change right so it's gonna be natural that the recipes that we write the way we write them are gonna evolve and I mean I was just thinking I was like what would I really want I know this is crazy but wouldn't it be cool if you were cooking a recipe and you know obviously you're doing it on your tablet these days or your computer you don't have a printed out page and your hands are all full of goop and you know it's like and you know they have a swipe thing which doesn't really work that well would it be great if you could just queue it and we just read you the next step yeah yeah like we should be working on every we're working on it right now I have my kid do it I'm like Donny what is it safe for step three and she's like yeah you know I want but I would it be really good if I could just ask Siri or whatever you know read step three yeah we're we are in fact working on this with saying our skunk works to work up there and there they give them a week and they come up with something and we're introducing her grocery list soon that's gonna be really cool and then they have this thing which is like next step and then it'll move to the to the next step less thing know what's in my pantry already right we're in we're starting here and we're moving every great to know and undoubtedly that's gonna happen because this they're gonna know everything about I feel like I'm like in a minority and that I kind of want all technology out of my kitchen nice like I don't have a the stuff that isn't that you couldn't find 50 years ago and I find that like being in the kitchen and being without my phone or without my computer is like a very safe space and so I feel like there's got to be a way to like and that's why I like books and the newspaper like words on a page well I'm addicted to my phone don't get me wrong but I you know it's like if I get one hour a day where I'm not so I talked to us about your alone time in the in the kitchen I find that most cooks have these sort of like favorite devices favorite tools favorite things that indicate to themselves that what they're doing is good and honest work right like I love this paring knife or what have you what is it for you know my favorite tool yes the the lodestar the thing that lets you know you're cooking Oh God I mean really it's it's just like when I get the grease on my hands ya know for me it's like I touch everything and which is why I don't want to touch a screen but I mean for me I know I'm cooking I know I'm in my happy place I mean it's definitely my favorite paring knife I've got my favorite giant really messed up cutting board and it's really messy and I have my music on which is important you know and I picked the music when I'm in that when I'm cooking it's like I was saying this the other day when my husband's driving he picks the music in the car when I'm cooking in the kitchen how do you do Oh God all kinds of crazy things so the other day oh oh and it's all over the place like the other day I was doing a long day of cooking I was doing stuff with cranberry beans you know it's like you have to if you have to show them and it takes a long time so I was like I'm gonna put on Don Giovanni and so good and you know the thing is when you're in your kitchen like Julia Child said the good thing about being in your kitchen just no one can see what you're doing no we can hear me singing we should have we should have a playlist so people can know it no you playlist is a playlist is a good thing we've had remarkable success putting music at the end of those newsletters and people really thrill to it because they understand or I think we're all I think to read one of the reasons why we're all here is because we understand that it's more than just the food it's more than just the recipe it's all the kind of cultural products that surround our lives enjoy and neurons sometimes of misery in New York City we try and put that all together and make it better with food but I was asking about tools but don't and also don't take this and don't take this the wrong way but the most surprising thing for me about your newsletter ISM that you had excellent taste in music oh like cool not just another dad rocker [Laughter] favorite tool how about me cut my cutting board also because it's the only thing that never leaves my kitchen or the place that it's in like I'll lift it up to wipe under it but it stays where it is and I have like my Chemex of my day-old coffee that I'll drink the next day and my knife and you know whatever and that's like my station I think it's from being trained in a restaurant where you have your station and you come in and you set up your station and so I do that and then I have like a little tray of salt and pepper and olive oil and chili flake and those two little places are my like okay I'm in the office you're in the office and doing it so day old comics coffee yeah celebrity writers they're just like us so great I know we want to take some questions and we're gonna put up mics in the two aisles and you can line up behind them and and ask us or ask these ladies some some questions but before we do that and while they're setting up those mics I'm gonna return to the question of cooking with this question favorite holiday of the year to cook for easy yeah easy for you really what see what think what'd he make hands down oh I mean I know it's a basic answer but like the only holiday I feel like I really celebrate other than my birthday which I celebrate for like a month I feel like there's like not another imagine yeah that's so for Passover I will say our Passover because for thanks to me don't you feel like you've cooked it ready Twite like especially you this year but like you cook it I feel like I cook it in July oh yeah I'm in by the time and then I kind of cook it again in September by the time Thanksgiving rolls around I'm like can't we just have a porchetta yes and I mean for the record I am skipping Thanksgiving this year I'm not I'm gonna be out of town I'm not gonna do it I'm not gonna even the country so maybe but I've cooked it 18 times already that's my favorite Thanksgiving story coming to The Times soon with a lot of recipes attached to it about cooking in a small apartment which is the way a lot of New Yorkers and San Franciscans and and others experience and that and they're kind of dealing with the space-time continuum of the small oven a small apartment with a with a big feast I'm so relieved that you say Thanksgiving would write a book about how are you well okay so my favorite eating holiday I know this is gonna sound weird but my favorite eating holiday is Yom Kippur I know because I break fast is the best meal of the year because it's bagels and lox and I don't have to cook it and I go to Russ & Daughters and it's really yummy and I have the vodka and it's just so I'd love I love the break fast but the favorites with a favorite one that I cook on it's probably you know it's funny we do this I started doing this Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas Eve know I grew up totally Jewish we did not celebrate Christmas but my husband celebrates Christmas so we started doing this Christmas Eve dinner and it's not because it's just friends it's not any family because my family doesn't celebrate it it's just the best dinner party of the year for us you know we but we just we get and we get to get caviar because it's seven fishes and I get to put anchovies in every single cord I just I love I will come over really so I'm and we get to server the bet any what's Christmas Eve it's just all the good things Christmas Eve it is a good freeze yeah I do a tortilla for oh what's your favorite what Thanksgiving I love Thanksgiving but at this point I can do Thanksgiving with a mild drug it's like I did so much you do it on autopilot but I realize I do love something so that's a professional problem of mine the the Thanksgiving thing that I cook it all year long but I love the feast I really do however that experience of just being with your family on Christmas Eve and serving one thing in my case a Quebec wise meat pie with so delicious and I loved it and we we nestled tight all right let's get these lights up a little bit not too much and we'll take some questions or they'll take some questions and I will direct them we'll start right here you can move to upstate New York we have all kinds of great ingredients you guys have a phenomenal platform with which to really make sure that the rest of the world starts or the rest of the American world starts to eat healthier do you ever have or feel the need to take your recipes and say instead of a six ounce portion we're gonna call this a four ounce portion instead of your tart we're going to say it's eight slices instead of six so that you can nudge the public or engage your readers that's a great question to a healthier lifestyle it's very frustrating for me to take the students that I'm teaching and say you can use this recipe but you need to eat half of it right how you actually it's really interesting because I have purposely been doing that I've been especially things like meat and like you know and desserts I've been trying to make this the portion size is smaller but then you know what people in the notes they say okay well this doesn't really feed you know this doesn't feed sex it feeds three so in a way they're kind of undoing it but I do about that all the time especially with meat you know I'm trying to get the meat servings to be smaller and add more vegetables and others we're seeing this in fact across our database where me portions are coming down vegetable portions are going up people are complaining or not complaining but we're not labeling we understand that the readership of MIT cooking indeed the readership of The Times is highly educated and curious and understands that when a recipe is a stick of butter in it that's a lot of butter yeah yes oh hi first of all I just wanted to say and you alluded to this earlier but the highest praise I can give to all three of you is that your recipes work so thank you so I love the comments on the recipes too and I'd love to hear from all of you about maybe the your favorite comment on one of your recipes okay find that I'm gonna just answer quickly without answering and they'll let you guys do favorite comments but they aren't comments they're notes and that was a deliberate thing on our part at the beginning where we hope that this small gesture of saying that it's a note not a comment might lead to more helpful comments without calling them comments words they matter and it worked that we have this remarkably kind and occasionally hilarious marketplace of ideas below those recipes and it's really me really comment oh good you don't mean the comments there absolutely not I have a very fragile ego there's something wrong with the recipe if people enough people are commenting on something maybe something's not working there X Y & Z somebody lets me know Margo laughs he will email me and say hey we've gotten a lot of comments about this or whatever but generally speaking which people think oh well like this person doesn't know what they're talking about you have to roast the cauliflower before you do the thing and this was bland and said it and I'm like well it looks like a lot of people like it so I think as soon as you let other people get in your head you stop creating for yourself and listening to yourself and I try to be as authentic and honest with creativity as possible instead of taking notes for the white noise into consideration but I do exactly the opposite every single comment because I mean I to your point I you know it does hurt when you're like okay they didn't like it but I also learned where my recipe writing could get better because I see you it's like people will say that the misunderstandings or questions or it didn't come out I'm like okay I should have queued it better or they'll say you know this was great but it took me 12 minutes instead of 6 and just those little things so I really I'm always looking to plus it's interesting to see what people know and what they don't so so I read it I read as many comments as I can as many notes as many notes as we can I can assure you that the editors are reading them all because we do we keep a close eye on it Instagram and everything like that it is a constant source of feedback so I feel like I'm we're all set for the record the greatest note was the one from the woman who gave one of our recipes to this other woman and she made it and then stole her husband and yes how do you avoid yet another chicken recipe which is I think another way of saying how do you continue to find inspiration and everybody wants the chicken recipe so we're gonna give it to him you know actually was really funny because I did this I interviewed Mark Bittman the other day because his book just came out and he I said to him was like what made you give up your column and he said well they came to me and asked me for another chicken recipe for me it's like and as he was he was like another roast chicken is what he said I was like and when as he was saying I was like oh another worse chicken okay great what can I do like I do it they go wrong which you're gonna examine yes sir good morning I'm Karl Siegel from Chicago first of all I just want to thank you for doing this it's been a great festival it's a terrific event society well done the question is you both talked about the complexity of working with chefs and translating the professional world and what's happening in their heads to our world what are some of your favorite kitchen hacks or shortcuts that you've learned from chefs that you just sort of incorporate into your own toolkit hmm Sam well I was cooking man I was creating with the chef Angie Mar yesterday and the park over in Bryant Park is part of the food festival and I've done that a number of times and but this was the first time I noticed she never peppers her meats when she Sears them off she's just salt and salts like aggressively and I asked her why and she said she feels she thinks that it burns the pepper and she gets that burned flavor in there and I was like wow I'm never peppering my steak again until I just learned that same thing the other day too and I stopped doing it I just keep learning it's a crazy world we got a lot of people so I'm going to move on to another question nightfall I think we all have an insatiable appetite so talk about food and recipes so I think that we do this actually a question for Sam with all of the very established and trusted resources out in the world for recipes how were you able to position NYT cooking as you know an indispensable resource for home cooks that's it thank you for for that I think that it has a lot to do with our employer the New York Times is understood to be this world-class news gathering organization and it was my belief that is is my belief that we can apply the same repertory 'el standards that we do to our conflict reporting or a business reporting to the gathering and dispensing of our recipes and I thought this might work in a big way because the last time the Times did that was when the New York Times cookbook came out in the early 1970s at a time when the Times was not a national or international newspaper but a metropolitan one and yet it was a national bestseller for more than ten years and when I was national editor I would see it in kitchens all across America and I thought we could put that on a phone if only we could transfer these dead article assets and literally we call it the morgue into a working searchable database that we could build out with beautiful photography and new awesome reported tested trustworthy recipes and it seems from your question that we've succeeded like many people I love to read cookbooks the way people read novels but for those of us who are much more of a task monkey versus a creative can you talk a little bit about the process of adapting a very complicated recipe and perhaps give us test monkeys some tips on that yeah I think that I you know it starts with the recipe in your decision or choice to put a complicated recipe in your book right I feel like for me personally wherever I'm publishing I try to stay away from that and I think that also came with as I got older and did this more and more my recipes five years ago maybe a little bit more complicated than they are now and that's just because I realized that they're not as serviceable to people and so taking a recipe that is inspired by something more complicated and saying okay this may look intimidating I'm gonna walk you through it I sort of write it as if I'm talking to somebody directly like my best friend or my mom whomever making sure that I am cooking through it and then making notes of any place where I think that a person could go wrong like oh you may notice that this is burning put foil on top or if the short ribs are browning faster than the onions take them out and then add them back in like I can see the pitfalls that would somehow make a recipe feel complicated and then walk you through that but I think it just starts with understanding like this recipe is gonna take you a lot more than a week night chicken or you know kind of setting you up your expectations correctly and knowing what you're getting yourself into so you can read the head note and which is all of our dreams when I hear people actually read the head notes I'm like oh my god thank you so much because there it takes a lot of work but setting you up and saying this is what to expect if I promise you something quick and easy and effortless and you read it and you're like this is not quick and easy and effortless then there's a miscommunication there and that's a tough thing about you know hitting that right mark of being interesting but also easy and what is easy to somebody might be complicated to another person and you're never gonna please everybody but all we can do is try to coach you through each step and each recipe needs to be like you can do this hi my wife and I recently transplanted from Los Angeles for 45 years I was a filmmaker in the 80s I took a detour and became a fish F and possibly the most prominent restaurant in the city I was present for the coining of the word foodie sure no bad guy yeah in any way what went on at that restaurant and the other ones trying to cook that there were a thousand stories and as you tell some of your stories I have a thousand stories I would love to volunteer to work with you you had mentioned something about washing dishes I don't know I don't need to be paid if you want me to volunteer my food family in Los Angeles and I am a complete food person started cooking when I was four years old that's a great offering we thank you very much and come on down and talk to us we'd like that thank you yeah hi I'm talking about the whole of your jobs not just the cooking but also the reporting and the actual journalism do you have any piece of advice for someone who wants that whole job you're so good at it well I mean an advice for like the person who wants to come up to be a food journalist who's also developing recipes okay so you know I always say this to people the path that I took and I think the path Sam took it's very different right now but you cooking and writing or both finely wrought crafts you really need to work on them so if you are cut if you are take a writing class and take a cooking class you know Stosh in restaurants I mean Amanda Hesser was throughout this thing about how to become you know become a food writer and she said you know work on farms learn about ingredients take every educational opportunity that you can but make sure to always be working on your writing and also you know journalism it's so there's food writing and then there's journalism and they're slightly different and I didn't go to J school I actually have an MFA so I went through the rent and I'd been learning you know thanks to Sam and my other editor is how to be a better journalist and that's another skill that just I don't know how you teach that other than you know working with editors and going to J school but asking the right questions and doubting everything is the most important doubting all the answers and then asking again and then asking someone else I feel like I learned that lesson every day and that's really important too you know to the stories behind the food and there's also right now there's a lot of political journalism that's been political food journalism you know particularly that's been coming up and and that's also a different skill set so I would say get involved at the ground level but always always keep an eye on what you're writing and how you're writing it and if your mother says she loves you check it out hi so very similarly I am someone who is working on teaching myself how to develop recipes and it's been such an interesting process so what I wanted to ask is how do you know when okay this is done I'm ready to pass this on to the tester how do you feel about letting go of that creative control a little bit I think a lot of it is in tech is just it sheer integrity for any person doing any job like is this up to my personal standards and I probably have higher standards for myself than I do anyone else people like oh it's like when people cook for you I'm like it's great I don't care what it is like for myself I'm a lot harder on what I'm able to make so I think like a good test is when I eat the whole thing by myself or I'm like in a skill and I like I'm like oh this is really good or I'll I'll just talk out loud to myself and be like this is delicious like very pleased with myself and then sometimes I know if I'm cutting a corner and I know if something can be better and I know and somethings passable and I I don't want to be possible I want to be excellent and my perception of what is excellent might not be the definition for everybody in this room but it's all I have and similarly the recipes get tested and so I work with people that I trust to say like what did you think honestly and people give me feedback and I think that adjusting from there is important as well so we've got a three-day block for you to cook okay and it's day one and you've got this great idea for chicken hmm and you make it and it kind of sucks like it's not that great yeah that's wounding it's day one what hot like that chickens got to go they got three days so but that chickens gone they start you start right like I would take to the couch no I mean it's no I think I think when something goes wrong and you're like oh no no but I thought it was good you kind of know almost immediately what was wrong like oh I used the wrong vinegar or added it too late or didn't it not early enough or whatever like you can kind of know almost immediately why it's wrong and if I'm completely baffled and it's time to start over completely with a different idea right but do you jump right back on the horse and add the correct vinegar I ordered the ingredients to make it at least excellent designs depending on how long I think it's gonna take that's awesome yes hello I have a pretty simple build on the last question what do you look for in a recipe tester oh I have I actually have worked a lot of her recipe testers so I'm looking for skills that I don't have you know specifically to compensate I am fast and free and a little bit sloppy I want someone who's methodical I want someone who weighs and measures everything and doesn't say oh oh I know that a cup of sugar is always 130 well you know what is it 200 200 grams like I want someone who will wait every time anyway so I want someone who can read a recipe and catch all the little mistakes that I can't see anymore basically someone who is you know more of a obsessive type a person and I am same answer yes does they have a terrible kitchen it's super helpful that's true you know except they're right for me no they have a beautiful kitchens will be lost the videos yes hi I wanted to know two things one is if you all monitor your own instagrams yeah I mean yes yes yes all the time constantly I but I think similarly to the comments or the notes section it's a it's the best way for me to get feedback on recipes to answer questions to have a dialogue with people that are cooking okay and the other thing is a tiny criticism but oh do we love it the site I use it all the time frequent flyer but the search function yeah stinks yeah it does three I can I I know I'll remember a recipe and I'll put in something like chicken with yeah we all have this problem you don't have to yeah that the search function is if that's a difficult thing to do there's a company what's it called Google that has like twenty five thousand engineers working on on search and we've got like three unbelievably brilliant people trying to work on it and we're working all the time we'll make that better it's hard to compete with that company I just mentioned but and it's it is frustrating you're like I know it is chicken and I know Melissa wrote it and then it doesn't come up and it's frustrating but then you can do the workaround just go to your regular search engine and put in all those things and then it will find it on our site and that's what we call a backdoor yeah I'm a side from each other what food writers do you guys read to kind of get inspired and stay on your toes new food writers we are inspired by other that are colleagues because I lived for my colleague you know if I go back to a lot is Laurie : yes because here's a woman who is cooking the way Times readers cook the way we cook in a tiny kitchen in the West Village and telling stories that surround her food that are about emotion that are about feeding other people that are about sadness that are about joy and those are all the things that I want to communicate through my work when I can so I encourage you to go back to Laurie : yeah I would say some of the food writers have you forgotten about the ones you can only find in books you know I mean MFK Fisher Jane Grigson fabulous British writer I mean that kid Bert green I found him from the store and in Amagansett just an amazing book cookbook totally out of print and I just discovered the other day he's an amazing writer yeah Judith Jones oh you think book normal Efron great food writer yeah yeah I tend to favor both with cookbooks and actual writing to like go backwards just because there's so much there that we're so concentrated on moving forward and what's happening right now that I feel like everyone's just doing the same thing and that's not that interesting to me so I feel like doing looking at the work that was done in a pass where people were really writing from an authentic place and like pure love of the craft essentially rather than like what's gonna get them published on the Internet is a really good place to start we're gonna say one more question and then we're all gonna go down and buy these guys books first is one say thank you because I I just never liked the anchovies and anything [Applause] and then Melissa put them in everything brought all these great flavors into my cooking and different ways that I just like never I didn't know what Teresa was before it anyway my question is about the photography because I recently made like they were like pork chops with snap peas and after I mean it I was like like the instructions and it's like a totally different color green than the green and the picture so I was just kind of wondering when the food photography happens is like you made the dish per the instructions and then they take the picture or is it like did they make it to the picture like there's no we don't mess with there's no there's no Kardashian main food that said you know the one of our photographers and Ruben he talks about this window in his studio that he calls his magic window and he often shoots at the end of the day in the magic hour and the light is perfect and everything is awesome it looks like your wedding photograph and you don't look like your wedding photograph so I don't and and and so that can create a little bit of disjunction but that's not always the case I mean if you if you think of Allison's thus do well hashtag this too like I've seen 20 good jillion photographs of that dish on Instagram and they all look like the one we put in the paper so sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't it's different for everybody honestly and I think that for like cookbooks where I'm cooking the food and there's like a little bit of styling but I think that for the most part we're cooking the food and then taking a photo of it yeah like and that's different across the board but sometimes it's like there's food stylist whose job it is to make sure that the food it's gonna look beautiful enough for you to want to cook it in chances are they're under cooking the peas ever so slightly to get through three I mean that's what happens is like they're they're thinking about food stylists are thinking about the look of the food we might cook it until it's drab like that horrible khaki color that tastes so good but they're gonna pull it off the stove a minute ahead secrets of the food world revealed thank you very much for coming today [Applause] [Music]

Channel: New York Times Events

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Id: xDVUjwxqW18

Length: 64min 55sec (3895 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 06 2019