Eat My Globe Podcast

Interview with Christopher Kimball

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hi everyone. Welcome to a brand-new episode of Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn't know you didn't know about food. And today we have one of my heroes, in fact. He's the founder of Christopher Kimball's Milk Street. Milk Street, interesting, is the street where Benjamin Franklin was born just a few blocks away from the office of today's guest. Our guest is also a food entrepreneur, a food enthusiast, and a beloved teacher for the many thousands of watchers and readers, with his and his team's very precise, practical, and informative explanations of recipes and food equipment. He's also published many, many books, including 2005's Milk Street, Backroads Italy, Milk Street Shorts: Recipes That Pack A Punch, Milk Street COOKish, and 2018's James Beard winner Milk Street Tuesday Nights. He also supports nonprofits such as Big Brothers Big Sisters. As someone who works in the food profession as I do and who appears on cookery shows, I don't watch too many food shows. It is what we in England call a busman's holiday, like driving everyone around when you are on a holiday. However, one of the shows I always watch is Milk Street. And that, for me, is the biggest compliment that I can pay to this great show on public television and indeed the magazine that goes with it.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my real great pleasure to introduce you to Christopher Kimball.

Christopher Kimball (“CK”):

Well, that was a lengthy and superlative intro. Thank you very much.

SM:

Well, I wanted to get over to people just how great you are. And I think before you start, yeah, we go into the history of it because this is traditionally a food history podcast. But because I do it for myself, I'll do anything when I want. Perhaps you could tell people about what you're going to do in future, what plans, speaking. . . . I know you do a lot of speaking, Milk Street et al., what you're going to be doing in the next few years.

CK:

Probably the same thing we've done the last 10 years. I started Milk Street in 2016. You know, we travel the world. We go into people's homes. We cook with them. We sit, yeah, I really want to get a sense of how people actually cook in different places. You know, not so much the fancy restaurants, but how real families cook.

So, whether that's, you know, Oaxaca or whether that's Rome or whether that's Chiang Mai and Thailand, wherever, I kind of like to spend time with people, real home cooks, right? Because even though I don't always speak the language, you can be in a kitchen with somebody and speak the language, right?

SM:

You can point.

CK:

Yeah, you can point or go, no, or something, as they do to me, but I've learned so much because other people around the world think about cooking. It's not just the recipes are different or maybe the ingredients are different. It's more their concept of what cooking is, is different.

And so that's, I just want to continue doing that because every time I cook with somebody, you know, I learn, well, I never thought of that. It's like, oh you can make a cake batter in a blender. Okay, I'll do that. So that's the fun part is the adventure of discovering how little you know, I guess, is the best way to put it.

SM:

Well, that's fantastic. And I know that all my listeners want to hear about that because they all know you. But what I'd love to do as well is a bit of history first. I'd love to know because I first started seeing you from England reading Cook's Illustrated, Cook's Magazine. And so that was in what 1980 or so. I think I was about 16 doing that.

CK:

1980.

SM:

And so I wanted to know what you were doing before that and how you got into that, and then how you went from that kind of onwards.

CK:

Well, I graduated college in ‘73 and went to Columbia. Didn't do a lot of studying.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

There was a lot of war protests going on at time. I majored in primitive art.

SM:

Wow.

CK:

I was an art history major. Had the most useless degree ever. There are no jobs. And then I worked for somebody in Connecticut for a few years. And then I... In ‘79, I quit my job in summer of ’79, and decided I wanted to publish a cooking magazine.

SM:

How?

CK:

Well, I don't know.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

Like a thing bursting out of the head of Zeus, don't know, something weird. And I started it because nobody was publishing a cooking magazine. They were publishing food magazines, travel, restaurants, you know, that whole thing. And I don't really care about that part of it. But I really cared about the home cooking. So yeah, we started off, I met James Beard back in the late ‘70s. He helped me out a little, met Julia, et cetera. And I just started, and for whatever reason survived.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

Probably unwittingly because I was too stupid to know what I didn't know. And then the New Yorker came to me in 1983, and they bought part of it. And so, I became part of the New Yorker. And it's a long story, but eventually it got sold in 1990. And I went about a year later, I restarted Cook's. I had called it or I checked with the trademark office and the trademark for Cook's Magazine had expired. So, I sent a check for $175, got my trademark back and then I restarted the magazine in ‘93. But this time I took out all the advertising. The original Cook's had advertising, but I was a terrible salesman. So, I didn't want to do that anymore. And I just got rid of all the ads and made a 32-page magazine. And we ended up eventually with a a million subscribers. . .

SM:

Whoa.

CK:

. . . to Cook's Illustrated.

SM:

Wow.

CK:

And I didn't have any color in the magazine. It was all black and white. And my reasoning was this is a serious cooking magazine. This is not a fancy entertaining magazine. So, let's get rid of color, which made it less expensive to produce, but actually it was more of an editorial decision. And then I started, that was America's Test Kitchen. And then I started the TV show and eventually started a radio show. And yeah, built that into, we had 150 employees probably by the time I left in 2015. It was a big, very successful company. And, you know, I got tired of making oatmeal cookies for the 29th time.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

I grew up in New England. I love New England cooking. I still cook a lot of that food. But I wanted. . . I just felt that the world of cooking was about to change. Obviously becoming global. Obviously everything was getting mashed up, right? So, I decided to do Milk Street and travel the world and like re-learn how to cook with, by talking to other people and It turns out that was the timing was good. You know, that's exactly what happened to cooking and now. . . You know in the old days. . . . For example, Paula Wolford, you know did books on Moroccan cooking, for example.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

Well, OK, but those that was sort of like your Saturday night recipe. You do her couscous or something. But what I really wanted was the Tuesday night. You know what? What is someone in Fez cooking on Tuesday night? Or what is someone in Rome cooking on Tuesday night? Whatever.

So, I wanted the real everyday food. And that's what happened instead of just doing sort of special, you know, once a month we'll do a special, you know, quote unquote ethnic recipe, whatever that means, you know, every, during the week.

SM:

I'm going to ask you about that later.

CK:

Yeah. Well, I mean, let's just, okay, we'll, we'll do a red lentil soup. It takes 40 minutes and, you know, or we'll, you know, whatever. So that really changed how I cooked a lot. And, it really got me more excited about cooking. I got reinvigorated with the whole idea of learning again. So that's pretty much where we are. We do TV, we do radio, we have cooking classes in person, online. We have store, we do some other stuff. But it's about my, I'm very curious about how people cook. And you know, I've spent a lot of time like making scallion pancakes with a baker in Taipei. And she was yelling at me with a rolling pin and. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

. . . you know, I was completely screwing it up. But, but I, you know, she taught me a lot. So here I am.

SM:

So, those things when you travel around. I want to talk about those later, but let's talk about the TV series because that's how I came to know you. When I first moved to the US, so it’s about 15, 16 years ago, that was the first time I saw the program regularly. And Milk Street, I think, was just about on then, or you were splitting. So, you have so much of, I mean, 90% I realize of the public television audience. And that's an amazing amount because I've tried to sell some shows to the public television and I know it's very hard work. How did you get to that point? It's an amazing thing. And I just want to know from me apart from anything else.

CK:

Oh secrets. Well, it's 96%. Let's be specific.

SM:

96. Oh gosh. Okay.

CK:

My theory is if you just keep showing up year after year for 45 years, you eventually get to 96%. I think that's what it is. I mean, the America's Test Kitchen show that I started, you know, obviously did really well for a long time. And I think that I was a known quantity by then. So, I don't know. I mean, American public television here in Boston. . . .

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

It's a show I know them very well. They're great people. They were very helpful in the launch. And you know, most stations said, yeah, okay, we'll give it a shot. You know, and it did well. It got the ratings. And I don't know. I think it's just being around long enough. You know, I think public television is really interesting.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

Ten years ago, everyone was saying it's dead. It's like, you know, the cable channels, there's Netflix, there's streaming, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but public television has a massive audience, massive.

SM:

I'm one of it.

CK:

And we still get almost a million eyeballs a week on the show. And it's also destination viewing, right? It's not like you're switching back and forth constantly. It's like people turn on public television on Saturday, leave it on. So, it's one of the few, other than sports, it's one of the few destination viewing opportunities you have. And so, I'm very loyal to public media because it provides, obviously there's no advertising and it has a very loyal audience. They've stayed with me a long time and I've stayed with them. So, I think. . . . there's very few places in the media landscape where loyalty matters anymore, right? I mean, there is no loyalty.

SM:

Yeah, no it. . . .

CK:

It's like I was loyal till five seconds ago. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

. . . and then I switched my YouTube channel. So, I'm very keen on public media.

SM:

That's great that you hear that. And I'd like, I also wanted to know how many people you have involved now with Milk Street because you have you, you have the team. I'd like to know how you get about by, you know, doing the foreign travel, doing the cookware, doing the, because I don't know whether that's just you. I don't know whether that's just you and the team work together. I don't know whether it's the team can just say no no we want to do this and Chris we don't know we don't know what you want to do but we're going to do this. I mean how do you get away with all of that?

CK:

Well, there are many topics on which I can assure you that I'm a lousy person to get advice from.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

And that like management skills are not high on my list as anyone has ever worked for me. I just hire really smart people and they don't need much management. I mean, essentially, we have very small teams. Like our, our TV team is like three people.

SM:

Oh wow, okay.

CK:

Our radio team is like four people. We do have probably 10 people in the kitchen, but we don't have big teams. I've sort of. . . . We have about 55 or 60 people in total. I've sort of found that there are two kinds of people I love. It's like people who can just go do stuff and figure stuff out on their own.

SM:

Which is great.

CK:

And those are few and far between, but they're great. And then people actually get the work done, who really good at something and they get it done and they're very efficient. It's the managers, you know, who are managing a process that sometimes that's kind of a hard thing. So, over the years, we have a lot. We have a few people who are really great at what they do. And then we have people who are really good at what they do. But I like to minimize the management tier, especially for a small company, because you don't need. . . . I don't need a lot of people sitting around making to do lists, you know, and managers tend to do a lot of to do lists.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

And every week it's the same list, you know. So, we just have really great people and yeah, they go and do what they do. And if I don't like it, I'll complain. But I mean, my radio producer, she produces the show and, you know, we talk every week, but she's running the show. So.

SM:

Tell us what your show is called.

CK:

Well, it's just Milk Street Radio.

SM:

Okay.

CK:

But television. But, you know, I think that actually is my favorite thing I do is radio, the podcast, because I get to talk to people every week from around the world, as you know.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

And we have these great conversations and we can argue, you know, we don't do just cookbooks. I just had people on last week, two guys who wrote a book about how agribusiness actually is a great thing.

SM:

Oh okay.

CK:

Like the mass production of food. . .

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

. . . you know, let's stop dumping on it because actually it saved the world, which is true. But, you know. . .

SM:

It did.

CK:

. . . let's reform, you know, produce food or process food. Like fixing that is a better thing than trying to feed everyone in New York off small family farms. That's their whole thing. Now I'm a huge proponent of the family farms, but they have a point that if you're going to improve things, that's where you should probably start. But anyway, we had, we argued. So, we argued for an hour and it was fun, you know? And so, I think, I think that kind of podcast where you can reach out across the world and have interesting points of view and you can argue with people. I just think that's incredibly fun to do.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

Because you're not just standing there looking at someone, you know, making, you know, rice pudding in Paris, you know.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

Which is okay. But I'm staying there for two hours watching someone do it as opposed to or me doing it here. But I'm talking to someone about ideas. You know, I had a woman on years ago. She was from Switzerland and she had walked across the Gobi Desert. . .

SM:

Whoa.

CK:

. . . with a shopping cart, essentially. And I just like amazing story. And then she did the same thing with, you know, Tasmania or something. Anyway, but, you know, I did I met all these incredible people, including obviously the Alice Waters of the world and other people.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

But it's fun. And you get a lot of different points of view. So.

SM:

I know when I write, I tend to write four essays that I write, whether it's about British biscuits or, you know, and then the rest I interview. So, you know, people like you, people like Eric Ripert, people like Jacques Pepin, Alton Brown, all of those people. And I think that's so interesting when you have different points of view from your own. So, I think that's sort an amazing thing. But I know this is kind of outside that, but I want to know how often you test your recipes. That's just something, again, I want to know because when I test them, for me, I probably do them three or four times because I do it at home. But I'd love to know how often you test those recipes because you need to do it.

CK:

Well, in the old days at Cook's Magazine. . .

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

. . . I used to test sometimes 30 times.

SM:

Wow.

CK:

But I figured out when I started Milk Street, that if you're very careful about your protocols and how you set up your testing, you can cut that way back. So, I'd say most recipes, at least half a dozen, sometimes 10 to 15 times, it's even gotten higher than that occasionally. But if you test a recipe 20 times, you're doing something wrong. I mean, you really, you're not focused. If you focus on what's important and figure out how to set up the testing, you can get through it in less than 10 tests usually. But if a recipe, for example, we did a tarte tatin recipe I brought back from Paris last year, it's a very different approach. And we were on our 20th test or something. And I finally said, guys, I mean, this is getting out of hand.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

So, we pulled it back and I gave it to somebody else who finished it up. I think if you're not clear about what your objective is with the recipe, like what's, okay, if you're gonna do penne alla vodka, okay, which we did recently, well, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to figure out what the vodka is doing here? I mean, is that what this is about? Or is it about adding guanciale to the recipe or some other sofrito? Or is it about the emulsion between the tomatoes and the cream? What are you trying to do? And so, I think if you're very clear about your objective, you can test less than 10 times and get to the goal line.

SM:

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one because again, if I'm testing penne alla vodka, I have to, I'm fascinated with science. So, I treat, I look at the vodka side of it. I'm going, how does that work?

CK:

Right, exactly.

SM:

And if I'm talking to Alton Brown, he's fascinated in that, but I'm talking to Scott Conant or something like that. They're really interested in the taste of it rather than that. So, it's very different to do talk about. So, like that, when you do knives and those kind of things, you have such an endorsement. Your group, you personally, when you go out, do you have to be very, very careful with what you're endorsing when you do?

CK:

Well, we don't really, our store is really mostly stuff we produce.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

About 80% of our sales are things that we design ourselves and have produced. So, it's not so much I'm endorsing somebody else's knife, it's that we've designed the knife and we have it manufactured. So, that's. . . .

SM:

So, tell me about that.

CK:

Well, when I started Milk Street. . . I had some people come to me saying, you, we want you, we'll give you a royalty of something or other and we'll work on these products. And I quickly realized that was not ideal for a whole bunch of reasons. So, I said, well, how hard can it be to figure out how to make a knife?

Well, I went to Spain. I went to the factory there. And then I got hold of some people who knew about manufacturing in Turkey and trying other places. So, we ended up getting on planes and going to these places and talking to people. And it's really not that hard. Certain products, there's a lot of money up front to engineer them and figure them out. Knives are relatively easy. So, it's not that hard, but you just have to do it, you know, when you make some mistakes and then you figure out, well this kind of handle is better than that kind of handle or this German steel is better than this other steel or not. You know, what kind of, how thick should the blade be, et cetera. So, there's a lot of details, but you establish very close relationships with these other manufacturing companies. And they're really talented and they can be very helpful. And yeah, it's worked out really well. You know, steep learning curve, but after two or three years, I think we finally kind of figured out how it works. And we're not doing big appliances. . .

SM:

No, I'm sure.

CK:

. . . or we're not doing microwave ovens, but we're doing tools mostly, carbon steel cookware, cast iron. But yeah, my food editor lives in Australia actually, so he can go to Japan with a drop of a hat or he go to China or whatever. So, we have someone on the ground and it's really important. It's super important to show up in person.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

Especially in Japan. You know, I was there last May, but you showing up and be courteous and spending time with people goes a long way because you establish a personal relationship and that's worth a lot in that business.

SM:

Because I noticed, yeah, the way you talk about travel as well has that courtesy to it. And I wanted to talk about, first of all, I didn't realize that you have some travels as well, don't you? There's a Culinary Backstreet that you operate with.

CK:

Yeah, we partner with them, Culinary Backstreets. They manage this sort of on the ground organization. We come up with a tour. Our people will go out. They'll find the people we want to work with. They'll set the thing up. Culinary Backstreets will manage the day-to-day stuff. And then on the first tour, we always go with the guests, make sure everything's fine. And we have 10 different destinations now. It's become quite a... And the trips tend to sell out in about a week. And they're $4,000 $5,000 per person. I mean, they're not cheap.

SM:

That's a great, yeah, that's a good amount.

CK:

But like the islands of Venice, you know, does really well and we've, Romania and we have a whole bunch of them. So, we're working on Malaysia right now. So, I think the point of the tours is not to do the usual touristy. . . . .

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

You know, if you go to Oaxaca, believe me, there are certain places people go that are all set up and you know, whatever. We like to actually get sort of beneath the skin of that and get home cooks.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

You work with, so you get a real sense of being there, not just sort of from a tourist perspective.

SM:

Yeah, I know that when I do some tours or other things like that, it takes a while to get under the skin, as you say. So, I think that's a really important thing. So, this is how I want, because I've been to a hundred countries now, and I'd love to know how you sort out those countries, how you, you say, because Romania is one that I absolutely love. But you go to Romania, because you’ve been there before or. . . .

CK:

Yeah, I was there a couple years ago, went to Bucharest, drove up past the Carpathians into Transylvania, those little Saxon town villages right from the 1400s, 1500s. And I just fell in love with it. It actually looked, a lot of it looked like Vermont to me. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

. . . because I mean, it was totally shocking. And the food was really different. The baking especially.

SM:

Yep. Oh, so good.

CK:

I love the baking. And the people were charming and almost everybody had a root cellar. And you know, I saw once you get north of the Carpathians, there's a lot of horse-drawn wagons. You don't see many tractors. Whereas south of that, it's all tractors. But very small towns and really interesting stuff. It was a soup from nothing. Like she took caraway seeds, toasted them, put a bunch of water in the pan and that was the stock.

SM:

Wow.

CK:

And it was like, well, that's an amazing concept, just toasted spices.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

The flavor of the water, and then she put some other things in it. But it was, I learned so much from that trip and I was just utterly charmed. I mean, it was, you know, the other, thing that was interesting though was a lot of the tourists want to see Dracula's castle, right?

CK:

Well, the castle they go to was built after the historic figure was long dead. So, it's this, they send them to the wrong castle, but the Carpathians are incredible too. They're just wild and well you've been there, but they're crazy wild, cool mountain range. So, it's, I love, I love Romania. I want to go back.

SM:

We, my wife and I, who has spoken to Deborah, she, we went there very recently and we had the best time. But exactly where you said, we went to the castle and we're going, but this is a long way after. But it was great fun. That's the thing.

CK:

Well, the actual castle does exist. Vlad was in 1440, whatever it was. But it's just like a thousand steps and then it's just a ruin. But I guess tourists don't want to walk a thousand steps up a mountain and see nothing.

SM:

We love going there.

SM:

But I think the original castle is still there.

CK:

But when you go to different countries, what is it that you're looking for and how does that get out in the people that you are sending along to them?

CK:

I'm just looking for someone to show me a different way of cooking and or thinking about cooking. It's not about the landscape. It's not about it. It's just about, oh, oh you can do that. That's how you do it. And I also, the other thing I'm looking for is I love the fact you're welcomed into somebody else's home.

SM:

So good.

CK:

And you know their whole family's there. It's a little tiny dining room in Oaxaca. They're actually grilling on the sidewalk which is about 18 inches away from the trucks going by and you sit in their dining room with their kids and they have some mezcal or whatever. And you know, you're part of the family and that welcoming into somebody else's family is the best. I mean, it's just the best.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

And it's happened so many times that people were so kind and so welcoming. I've never had a case where someone was not welcoming, you know.

SM:

I've, I've never had that.

CK:

Now, you know, now the chef thing is a little different because every chef restaurant kitchen looks like every other chef restaurant kitchen. Well, almost all. So, the lighting's terrible. But the home kitchens are, you know, in a lot of them, I was in West Africa, and in Senegal, and in a kitchen, and it looked like a kitchen that was, you'd find in Denmark or something. I mean, it was just perfectly modern. And, you know, I was going like, gee, I need something that looks a little bit more, more colorful. But you know, she was a great cook and again, family there and we're sitting down to eat and you know, I don't know, it’s just, people, it makes you feel good about the human race, even though the human race track record is really pretty awful overall. I mean, the last 10,000 years has not been a lot of win-win, but when you cook with people, they just, it brings out the best in people and the generosity and the hospitality, I love the hospitality. I told the story of someone I know who's a food developer and photographer. She was in Albania years ago and she's in this orchard and it's getting dark in the afternoon and this woman invited her back to her cottage. Obviously she didn't speak Albanian so they couldn't really speak and she cut up an apple because that's all she had and gave her cup of tea. And you go like, here's a woman who has almost nothing except apples, you know? And she invites her back, call a stranger and gives her a cup of tea and an apple. And you just go, yeah, that's it, right? I mean, that's the whole point.

SM:

That gets my heart because you mentioned Senegal because I recently have cooked a recipe for my substack about Chicken Maafe and I went to Senegal and I spent time there and I did that by going to someone's home and having them. So exactly the same thing. It's really fascinating to me as it is to you. And that's why I wanted to ask you, you came up with this phrase you said, you said there is no ethnic cooking, which I agree with. You said it's a myth. It's just dinner or lunch served somewhere else in the world. And I love that. But what's, what does that mean to you? Because you've been to a lot of countries too.

CK:

Well, I think back in the ‘60s, you know, when you thought about cooking in some other place, it was almost, it was almost a National Geographic thing. It was like, this is very strange and it's very weird and they have odd ingredients and you know, it's this great mystery. And we put all these cuisines, whether it was India, it was China, was Diane Kennedy of Mexico, Paula Wolfert of Morocco. You sort of put it on a pedestal, right? And maybe once in a while you'd make the dish and you'd do the Persian rice or whatever. But, the fact of the matter is that's not the right way of looking at it. Because the people in Morocco or wherever you are in Mexico, because it's all different, they don't think of their food that way. People in Mexico don't eat Mexican food.

SM:

Yeah, that's yep.

CK:

People in Morocco don't eat Moroccan food. They just have food. We don't eat American food, we just eat food. So, you have to get over this whole idea of one, all the food in Morocco is going to be fabulous. It's not.

CK:

All the food in Mexico is, it's not.

SM:

That's true.

CK:

There's bad food everywhere in the world. You can go to Ho Chi Minh City and get great food and get bad food. That's not the point. The point is it's just food. And if you go there and you feel, you're talking one-on-one with someone, right? You're not worshiping their food.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

You're not talking down to them, but you're both cooks.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

And I know a lot about cooking and they know a lot about cooking, different kinds of cooking, and you share that, then it's just, yeah, we're just cooking, right? And that opens the door to having a real relationship with people instead of. . .

SM:

That's great.

CK:

. . . you know, instead of worshiping what they're doing, you're learning something, right? And they're learning, hopefully learning from you. I mean, if I'm... If I'm cooking with someone, I'll say, well, why did you do it that way? You know, I wouldn't do it that way. I'd do it this way. And they'd say, well, you're doing it wrong.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

Okay, fine. Well, I think you're doing it wrong. So, so all of a sudden you're just two people cooking. And that's the point. It's not, we're not, we're not doing Saturday night. We're not doing restaurant food.

SM:

No, we definitely don't.

CK:

And some of the food, like my favorite thing I found in Mexico last time I was there. They. . .  was at a restaurant and a little tiny place between the airport and downtown and they obviously made their own tortilla. So, there was one woman who made the tortillas and she'd make a fresh tortilla and then she'd open up, it would puff up as she got it on the grill, right?

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

She'd open up one edge and it's sort of, so there was a pocket.

SM:

Yep.

CK:

She took an egg and put it inside and sealed it and put it back on the griddle and she cooked the egg inside the tortilla.

SM:

Oh sounds so good.

CK:

And I'm just going like, that's the simplest thing in the world.

SM:

Yep.

CK:

But it's one of my absolute favorite ideas.

SM:

What's actually what's the most interesting thing you learn from traveling to all these countries? Is there one thing you go, I'm going to use that at home?

CK:

Well, the two things. One thing I would say is the best food in the world probably is the simplest and least expensive, right? I mean, there's nothing new about that. But it's amazing. Like in Calabria, you know, they make amazing food that costs nothing, you know, beans and greens, whatever it is, you know, simple pastas, whatever, but that's one thing.

I think secondly, it's the idea that you, it's the rule of three. When I'm looking at a recipe, if I see three different things going on in terms of flavors, for example, or textures.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

Like in Somalia, they make chicken soup with some broken rice and etc. And then it's fairly straightforward, but then they put, you know, like radishes or cabbage on top for crunch and they have two hot sauces. So, you have the hot sauces, you have the crunch of the fresh vegetables, and you have the base. That's the rule of three. So, if you look at a recipe and if you think about it that way, it's sort of decoding music, right, a song.

SM:

Yeah, yeah.

CK:

You can say, well, this is not in the key. So, it's like saying, well, this texture is not in the base, right? There's something else going on. So, I think the rule of three is probably my most useful takeaway.

SM:

That's fantastic. I think that's a really great one. Okay, let's get into some of the questions. You have tasted just about every food in the world almost.

CK:

Not really.

SM:

But not really, but you you've tasted a lot more of it than most people. What ingredient do you find right now in the US and it's just totally overhyped? Or do you?

CK:

I don't care about, you know, lemongrass got hot a few years ago.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

Okay, well, I had lemongrass in Vietnam years ago with clams, it was delicious, it's like, okay, I mean, and then you can go into, you know, black limes are really hot, or, you know, whatever it is, you know, lime leaves or whatever. I don't care. I mean, I just, I think all that is just what foodies run around and blog about, but I don't, it's of zero interest to me, really. I don't care. I don't care what's hot or what's not. It's like, whatever is hot this year will be gone next year.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

And yeah, Boba tea was big five years ago now. I don't know. So, I don't care.

SM:

Well, I mean, I love that because so many people that I do have on here go, oh well, I love using this. And I just go, but what does it mean? Suddenly we've got light and dark soy sauce. I never saw that before. And now they use. . . .

CK:

Well, I would say one ingredient I think is one of the most useful is za’atar.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

I find that, I have a friend of mine, mother lives in Jerusalem and also up in Palestine, but she sent me a hand-picked wild za’atar with sumac, et cetera, and the sesame seeds, and she sent me a jar of it. And it's totally unlike anything you can buy. I mean, it's just totally different. And it was like I had great food for like six months because I put it on everything. But there are a things like that that are really helpful, you know.

SM:

What I also, before I move on to a couple of the fun questions that I ask everyone who comes on, if there was one pantry item that you could live without, would that be, za’atar is there, what?

CK:

Yeah, well, yeah, that would be one. The other is the red pepper from Turkey when I was there in Istanbul three years ago. You can buy their red peppers, crushed red peppers, Biber, for nothing, like $10 for a huge bag of it. So, I have quite a lot of that around. I use that and it's a little fruitier than like cayenne peppers or crushed red peppers, and I really like that a lot.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

So, that I like ingredients that are not just hot or not just sweet but are kind of a nice mix of flavors. So, I use that all the time too. But I think za’atar is probably my, it's the number one most. You can put it on eggs, you can put it on chicken, you can put it on almost anything.

SM:

Yeah, we found a lot of things when we're in Turkey. In fact, this time last year, we went around the ‘Stans and Turkey and all of that. And they have such amazing food. And even the ‘Stans, you know, going to those places was amazing. And some of the things we brought back from Turkey was just unbelievable. So, I can absolutely...

CK:

Yeah, Turkey's Istanbul is I hadn't been there in 50 years when I went back. It was like from the airport to downtown. It's all built up.

SM:

Yeah.

CK:

I mean, it's like this endless. It's a huge city. And even if you drive half an hour, 45 minutes away, there's still big buildings. And, you know, in Paris, you drive 10 minutes outside of Paris and its country. But in Istanbul, you can drive for an hour and you're still probably in some sort of suburb. I was shocked how big it was, but it's a fascinating place.

SM:

Oh. I just love Turkish food. There's a sandwich there I had to talk about on the BBC World Service and it's a mackerel sandwich that they serve.

CK:

Oh yeah, I had that.

SM:

And that was, to me. . . .

CK:

Well, they cook them right there in the stands on the griddle.

SM:

That's exactly it. And it was so delicious, so perfect. And we sat there on a, what do call it, a little suitcase type thing. And we ate this sandwich. It was perfect.

If Christopher was a meal, any meal, it could be from history, it could be anything. What would it be?

CK:

Well, I often say apple pie is sort of my the crucible of cooking because it's all about the apples. It's all about getting the right flavors. It's all about not mucking it up with a lot of spices. It's all about getting the pie pastry just right. I mean, I think forget French tarts. I think an apple pie is about one of the hardest things to make. So, I would say that's probably it because you can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. You can eat it in July. You can eat it in December. It's the one thing you could eat at any time, but it's very hard to do well because you have to get the right combination of apples. You can't just throw a bunch of Macintosh or Granny in it.

SM:

So yeah, what type of apples would you use in it? Would you use a couple of apples? Would you use?

CK:

I use five or six kinds. There's a co-op in Vermont where I spend time. In the fall, they have an orchard that has all these old sheep nose and all these other great types. So just buy like two of each. And they have the French apples and they have apples this big and they have tiny apples. They have apples that are all rusty looking, some that are pebbly. And those apples don't sell because everyone wants a bright red shiny Mac or cosmic now, whatever it's called. And some of the flavors of apples are savory almost, right?

SM:

Yeah, yeah.

CK:

They're not super sweet and they are spicy. Some of them are actually quite spicy. So yeah, that's my favorite thing in the world is really good apple pie.

SM:

When I was in Kazakhstan, we went to the town where apples first originated.

CK:

I heard that story on someone's podcast a couple years ago. Yeah, that was really interesting. So, tell me about Kazakhstan. I really want to go there.

SM:

Yeah, and they. . .

Kazakhstan, all of the, all of the ‘Stans are so gorgeous.

CK:

Right. That's what I've heard.

SM:

And my favorite was actually Uzbekistan, which is glorious.

CK:

Yeah, that's what I've heard. What about that? Isn't there that famous old city in Uzbekistan? It's supposed to be, it's old buildings, it's supposed to be phenomenal.

SM:

Well, there's a lot of places like that. We went last year and there's really crazy places like Turkmenistan where the autocrat, the dictator, basically said all of the capital city, everything, the people, all has to be white. And so, you have to drop your car off when you come in, and then swap to one of their white cars and you go around.

CK:

Really?

SM:

Yeah, it's every person has to be dressed in white. All this, the public building, every building in fact, has to be white. And they also have this perfect, they had what do you call it? A gas thing from when the Russians were there. And they said, it'll only be two weeks once we set fire to it and it will be gone. It's been going for 57 years and it's this thing called the Gateway to Hell. It's just this place and you only 3,000 people a year from outside can go into this country. I mean, it's just lovely when you go and see it because not many people will see it. But for me, all of those ‘Stans were so beautiful. And Kazakhstan is when you go to Almaty, the name of this thing that's the city that sold the apples, they were. . . It was like being in Paris. All the streets were like boulevards. Everything was just glorious. And we're just going, this is Kazakhstan. And we knew nothing really about it.

CK:

Yeah, I'll have to be my next trip.

SM:

So please do go there.

Okay. If Christopher had to go back in time to any meal, where would that be? What would it be?

CK:

Well, that's not an easy question to answer.

SM:

No, it isn't, but you've got to choose one.

CK:

I think I go back to Napoleon's wedding.

SM:

Oh that's.

CK:

There's that very famous chef, you know, who wrote the book, that massive thousand-page cookbook.

SM:

Carême.

CK:

Yeah, he did the, Taillevant, wasn't it? that, I think. What was his name? Was it Taillevant or somebody else?

SM:

No, Taillevant was in the 1600s. It was Carême who, Carême, yeah.

CK:

Yeah, was Carême. And he did all the jellies and he did it was just an amazing thing. And obviously, Napoleon was quite demanding.

SM:

Yes he was.

CK:

But Carême had a lot of experience with demanding politicians because he worked. He actually even cooked for the Russians at one time. So, yeah, I think that would have been an amazing meal. I mean, or amazing culinary spectacle.

SM:

Oh, that would have been, yeah, that's a fantastic one. And Carême, if history is to be believed, was the first person to have a tall toque because he was a short guy, he was only four foot 10, and that's the way that everyone could see him in Napoleon's kitchen or the Russian's kitchen.

CK:

Well, he was a master politician because he ended up cooking for both sides. And the other side didn't kill him. So, I guess he was good enough so that... But he was a pretty dicey politics at the time. But anyway, that's one meal I would have liked to invited to.

SM:

Oh. That would be fantastic. That would really be outrageous to go and see.

Okay, and this is the last question and then I just want you to share your Substack or whatever you've got.

If Christopher had to go back in time to see the invention of anything in food, what would it be? Anything.

CK:

Well, I'm sort of interested in the ice cream machine because George Washington, I believe, had 10 of them.

SM:

Wow.

CK:

And he produced thousands of pounds of ice cream during the summer and spent thousands of dollars in those dollars doing it. And so, the first machines that were hand cranked or whatever, there were a lot of really interesting machines. And by the mid-1800s, there were a lot of people around like in Philadelphia and stuff making ice cream. A lot of African-Americans actually had ice cream companies.

SM:

Oh okay.

CK:

And that's sort of this underground culinary history that nobody knows about. But I think that the fact that there were ice cream machines in the late 1700s is actually kind of interesting.

SM:

Yeah, how they used to do keep them cool down in the in. . .

CK:

I think they did it like the old white mountain ice cream machines. I think they would, turned them in instead of they use saltpeter to chill it down. But they had pretty sophisticated flavorings and ice cream has a long regal history. So, I think that's pretty interesting.

SM:

And finally, I know you're very busy. And so what are your Subtacks, your social media sites that people can come and see what you're up to, what Milk Street is up to?

CK:

I just launched my own Substack last week actually.

SM:

Oh I'll have to go and join it.

CK:

Not even a week old, I'm on Substack now. I do two letters a week. And it's mostly, some of it's travel and cooking a recipe. Some of it's some things from Vermont where I used to write a lot about that. What I'm reading, what I'm seeing thoughts about, you know, if I ever hear the word Maillard reaction again, I'm going to throw up.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

And please stop talking about Maillard and gluten. I don't want to hear anymore.

SM:

[Laughter]

CK:

So, it's sort of like, you know, my own personal opinion, which sometimes gets lost in the the big brand of Milk Street, but you know, I obviously have a lot of opinions about food. And also what works and what doesn't work. It's like, does marinating work? Well, not really, most of the time. It doesn't really work. So why is that? So that's that. And we're on Instagram and Facebook with Milk Street, 177 Milk Street. You can go check that out.

SM:

177 milk street.

CK:

Yeah, you go check. We post on Instagram all the time and Facebook and yeah, we're doing a lot of that. I mean, that's, I find that to be a, the good news is that social media has given everybody a voice, right? And some of those voices are extremely smart. I mean, I'm amazed on Instagram, people who bake sourdough bread or whatever they do pastries.

SM:

Oh yeah.

CK:

There's a lot of talent out there.

SM:

There is.

CK:

And they never would have gotten any oxygen before social media. So, I think that's great. The problem is that you have a lot of content out there and what people want to see changes constantly. So, it's a real struggle, I guess, to constantly produce content that's consistent with your brand, with what you believe in, but also has legs on social media. And sometimes I did a, was in Paris last year, did the super light chocolate mousse, right? This restaurant specializes in it and you get this massive bowl of it. I mean, it's just huge. And that got hundreds of thousands of views. And then I would do, then I did a chocolate cake that got a fraction of that. And so, you don't quite know what's gonna take off and what's not. I think it's a curse and a blessing. It's a curse in that it's ever changing and it's hard to keep up with. But there's so many really talented people out there. I'm thrilled that they now have an opportunity to have a platform.

SM:

Yeah, I am too. So that is just great. Thank you so much for doing that.

CK:

Yeah. Thank you.

OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

And, if you like what you hear, please don’t forget to join us on Patreon, subscribe, recommend us to your family and friends and give us a good rating on your favorite podcast provider.

Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.” We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and essential help with the research.