Samin Nosrat of "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" on the fundamental elements of cooking

hi and welcome i'm anthony mason along with Michelle Miller and we're here in the CBS morning Taiyo to greenroom with chef and food writer Sammy Nusrat who didn't even consider a career in cooking until she ate at Berkeley's legendary Chez Panisse during college she got a job as a food runner there and worked her way up eventually impressing renowned chef Alice Waters who's called her this is big America's next great cooking teacher I think Julia Child the next great Julia Child was even put in there but last year nas rads first cookbook salt fat acid heat became a best-seller and earned her a James Beard Award at all that's a meal also inspired it did a critically acclaimed Netflix series by the same name the show explores what nas Rack considers to be the four vital elements of cooking you guessed it the title of her book thank you thank you for having me take us into this because the first thing I thought was wait what happened to sweet oh it's true it's everyone's like what about sweet and I do think sweetness is so important certainly as humans we're attracted to it yes but to me it's not one of the crucial things in everything that we eat these are the four that are universal to all sweet things and salty things so and I also think there's a way where each of these four elements interplays with sweetness and so you know salty and sweet sour and sweet and of course creamy and fatty and region so and and I really love the idea of trying to use cooking and use salt and everything to bring out the natural sugars especially out of things like vegetables so if you know that when you go to the farmers market and you're buying the freshest vegetables they actually have the highest amount of natural sugar and then when you you know roast broccoli in the oven and it gets brown and caramelized it's not sweetness that comes out so there's a way I think where the more sort of familiar familiar you are with cooking the more sweetness you can bring out naturally without adding sugar you weren't actually that familiar with cooking when you started at Chez Panisse nothing grilled cheese sandwiches yeah so what happened exactly and what was your aha moment that led to this to this idea so I I saved up for seven months with my college boyfriend to eat at Chez Panisse and his story this really incredible experience I had never eaten in a fancy restaurant like that before we were 19 I was 19 and so we definitely stood out in the fancy dining room and it was just such an incredible experience and I felt so cared for that immediately I wanted to work there so I wrote a letter and asked for a job bussing tables you can delivered the letter yes i hand-deliver it and very quickly I we know once I started working there vacuuming the floor and polishing so the well I start you know you get to eat everything and smell everything and watch the cooks cooking and it was so inspiring and I was a struggling poet in college that's not good and so I was like oh I need a skill and it was so inspiring so I begged them to teach me how to cook and the menu there changes every day so the chef's don't use recipes because that one day they're making paella the next day they're making lasagna or Bolognese or all different things from around the world and so over time I was like how are these people entering the kitchen they don't set timers they don't really check the temperature of the oven they know how to make everything without a recipe and I noticed these four elements were basic to everything that we were making so I came to one of the chefs and I said oh I figured it out salt fat acid Heat and he was like yeah I we all know that duh okay and I said why isn't it in any of the books you've told me to read so at that time I was like I'm gonna write a book about this one day and you did and what's so interesting about this book is how you illustrate I mean this is really you're a cup of tea Anthony because you're your stepdad was an illustrator so I loved the fact that this book is actually Illustrated it's not photographs but why did you make that decision well I I felt very strongly that I loved beautiful food photography but I felt like this book the idea of my sort of theory here is that once you know how to use these four elements you can make anything taste good with or without a recipe and I didn't want people to feel like they had to rely on recipes and if you have spinach in your house but my recipe calls for chard you should know you can switch those yes so if by doing overly styled very beautiful photos it sort of sends a message that you have to it should look like it has to look like my stuff doesn't even look like that so I worked with this incredible illustrator Wendy MacNaughton and she made look we made all these amazing charts and things I love them to show the ways that flavour is the same around the world you know and you tweak a few different things and here you add like a different kind of cheese to make your stuff taste maybe you know Middle Eastern you use feta cheese or you would use gorgonzola as a source of acid for Italian food and there's just a few basic things once you learn them you can make anything taste good what if I so unique about you is that you're so different but because it is so authentic it is not other you make it so not being an outsider but you blew up feeling that oh for sure I mean it's funny cuz the more I think about this and talk about it I'm like oh I felt like such an outsider I'm like did anyone really feel like an insider that's part of it and also because I always felt like I didn't belong I know how hard that feels and I don't want to ever make anyone else feel like that so my I feel like flute is this incredible tool to sort of bring everyone in and I'm so lucky that I got to do that so when did you get the idea of blending your storytelling skills yeah if you're with your food passion I've always wanted to write since I was in high school and I had an incredible high school English teacher who really encouraged me to be huge it was amazing what teachers name coach Dorman he was also my coach Thomas Dorman thank you he lives now in sedro-woolley Washington I was with him the other day and and so I really went to college sort of aiming to be a writer yeah and then when I came to food its I knew I didn't want to let go of writing so I always pursued both yeah and I was really lucky to get to find a way to intertwine both and make a career out of both and I can't really do just one feel very much like both parts of my you know my heart and my body need both my mind would you say that your career has really just skyrocketed since this Netflix series that flicks is bananas overnight it's really less than 1200 crazy I'm FaceTime my girlfriend I know and so I mean 190 countries simultaneously the power of Netflix is beyond anything I think anyone can understand yeah and so I feel again really privileged to have had this incredible okay no one asked you because I read something about when you were talking about developing this series from your cookbook and you described how you wanted in some ways that kind of feel like your room at home and all the quirky stuff that's there it's actually a concept I've had myself so I thought and most people looked at me like I was nuts when we do our own show here and what were you take me through that process and what you were thinking I can't take all the credit I worked with an incredible team of my producers and directors and really our director Caroline sue she was I think so charmed by my quirkiness well that she really wanted to capture that and also everyone at Netflix I think you know from the moment that we met they were they were like you're perfect just as you are yes you're kind of imperfection and silliness and the way you trip over yourself and like you make huge mess when you're cooking we don't want to clean that up and make you perfect like Martha Stewart or you know that exists already but what doesn't exist is somebody really accessible who also knows their stuff and so they all throughout the whole process really encouraged me to just be myself which is really funny because there's also a part of myself that's like very immigrant childlike perfectionist trying to like tidy everything and clean everything so we'd find ourselves in these rural homes filming you know and I'd be like organizing Michelle at somebody else's house it should be like stop in Japan Japan yeah how did you select the location um I mean again it was a team effort I feel like I've been in this industry for a long time cooking so I have had the incredible opportunity to meet so many amazing people from around the world so a big part the connections were my personal connections that we'd made over the years and then you sort of you know you you meet somebody and then you say oh do you know someone who makes an amazing soy sauce and so then they would send us to the next person so it would my friend Yuri was an incredible resource for us our friend Nancy who chi-su was an amazing resource for us in Japan and then through them we got to meet all of these amazing artisans and really I was saying earlier that I started weeping in the soy sauce factory I was so moved by their like generations of tradition in the place and I had asked I asked the director I said why didn't you use that footage of me crying it was so moving I was so moved and she said you looked like a crazy person [Laughter] did you find it a big leap to go from you know working on the printed page and in the kitchen to doing this all I think you know it's been a series of jumps for me first from the kitchen which is so collaborative writing which is so sort of on your own and solo and then back to like another collaborative project of making the show which in a lot of ways TV production is a lot like working in a restaurant where you it's a team effort everyone you're only as strong as your weakest persons you have to bring everyone along you have to make do with what you got you know and their time is limited money is limited all that stuff so that felt very familiar to me but yeah there were all these people had incredible strengths beyond what I knew how to do so II got to learn a lot but I you know for me story is at the heart of everything and so I felt pretty comfortable and also as I think in a lot of ways as like I grew up to immigrant parent with immigrant parents I grew up not fitting in I've spent my whole life learning how to make other people comfortable yes and in some ways that's hard for me because it squeezes my own self often into a little corner but on camera it's a great skill to have because I can put anyone at ease and so I felt really comfortable and I think it made them feel comfortable and then we made have very authentic scenes together what is the means next story oh my god you guys I definitely need to rest so I'm gonna take a break early next year and rest and then I'm really looking forward to writing and also I really have enjoyed making this show so I look forward to figuring out what show I get to make what was the biggest surprise in that process um I don't oh my gosh that's a hard question but there were a lot of surprises along the way I think to me how fast it moves how fast you just have to like get everything done and you never get a break and you just got we were running for 40 weeks straight I had friends who were like when can we hang out and I was like pretend I'm pregnant and I call me when the baby it just was non-stop non-stop non-stop so I think that was not something I was expecting hmm that is it acid is it what's the last one salt and he he he what's next I think what I'll probably end up doing is what I really look forward to doing with all of this attention is using it to lift other people up you know as a woman of color in the food industry and now on TV there are not a lot of us here and I've already received so much attention for that so much positivity which I'm so grateful for but I woke up with like kind of in a cold sweat a few weeks ago like this is gonna get lonely if people are like Oh some nina's are great hopes I mean is the future so I feel like it's now my responsibility to turn it and bring others up alongside me did you know did you have a hope when you did I have a hope great hope as a person um oh I have had many I mean Oprah yeah shall Obama doing that yeah I mean I think any strong women who I've been able to look up to throughout the years have been really a really inspiring to me so I feel there and luckily they're everywhere you know and a lot of them aren't on TV a lot of them are just in our family on the backs of restaurants yeah I access restaurants hello can we talk about that like that oh gosh you're an inspiration and most importantly you are such a jewel thank you so much to Joy such a delight I'm gonna break you I'm gonna go I'm gonna get you to like laughing tickle yes sameen Asura we bang to you author and and superstar Congrats on the series and the James Beard Award everything thank you I'll be back Lena Q all for watching thank you

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 29,430

Keywords: video, cbs, news, greenroom, Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Id: KKNHbWNI7wQ

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 04 2018