This Is TASTE

Andy Baraghani started his professional cooking career as a teenager at the legendary Berkeley, California, restaurant Chez Panisse, and he was truly just getting started. After working as a line cook at Estela in New York City, he was hired as the food editor at Tasting Table and eventually found his way to the Bon Appétit test kitchen, where he worked for over six years and won the hearts of many with his exceptional cooking instruction and kind heart. Andy’s rich story and sharp recipe writing chops come together so beautifully in his new book, The Cook You Want to Be. In this episode, we talk about the book and some of the recipes inspired by his Iranian heritage, as well as learning some of Andy’s golden cooking rules. We also find out about the three-course tasting menu that he cooked to land his gig at BA so many years ago. What a great conversation!Buy: The Cook You Want to Be Additional Reading: Andy Baraghani’s Essential Kitchen Tools [Bon Appetit] How Andy Baraghani Became the Internet Boyfriend of Our Dreams [Out] Andybaraghani.substack.com [Substack] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve been talking a lot about food TikTok in the office, and we’ve written about TikTok, too, but we haven’t had a bona fide TikTok star on the show until now. Eitan Bernath has over two million followers on the platform, and we talk about what makes a great TikTok video, what he ate growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and how his first cookbook, Eitan Eats the World, expresses his love of many foods, including a deep interest in Indian cuisine. It’s a really great conversation.Buy: Eitan Eats the World  More from Eitan Bernath:   @eitan [TikTok]  $500 Wagyu Steak: Amateur vs. Chef [YouTube] Spaghetti & Meatballs | Brother vs. Chef: Cooking Challenge [YouTube] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was such a treat to have Sara Jenkins on the TASTE Podcast, and this conversation really delivers. Matt has followed Sara’s career for over a decade, dating back to her amazing restaurants Porchetta and Porsena in New York’s East Village. We talk about her childhood growing up in Beirut and Italy—and how, to this day, she returns to the Tuscan farmhouse her family bought in the 1970s for their annual olive harvest and some of her recent writing on TASTE.Also in this episode, TASTE editors Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard discuss three things each of them have been excited to eat, cook, watch, and read lately.Additional Reading and Listening: Who Called the Carbonara Police? [TASTE] A Very Roman Rice Ball [TASTE]  Substack’s Food Fellows [release] TASTE Podcast 71: Eric Kim  Buy: Olives and Oranges and The Four Seasons of Pasta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the TASTE Podcast, we talk to chef, writer, and activist Jenny Dorsey. Jenny has beat Bobby Flay on Beat Bobby Flay and shown the internet how to make Spam-filled wontons, but she’s also the founder of the nonprofit Studio ATAO, which creates educational tools for food publications and organizations to think inclusively and equitably about their work. We talked about how VR goggles can shift the social dynamics at a dinner table, what makes a good neighborhood restaurant, and the astounding amount of research she put into writing the official cookbook for Avatar: The Last Airbender.Buy: Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Official CookbookAdditional Reading:  The Virtuous, and Virtual, Activism of Studio ATAO [TASTE] Toolkit for Recognizing, Disrupting, and Preventing Tokenism in Food Media [Studio ATAO] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve made it to 100 episodes, and it feels like we’re just getting started. Thank you for listening—we have some amazing things in the works and can’t wait to share them with you. Our guest this episode is a legend in the food podcasting world. Dan Pashman is the creator and host of the long-running podcast The Sporkful. In this fun conversation, we learn about how Dan pivoted his career from producing radio (including a stint with Marc Maron at Air America) to launching his own series that dives deep into all areas of food. We discuss what makes a great Sporkful episode and learn about Dan’s recent adventure of inventing a pasta shape. How do you invent a pasta shape? We’ll find out. We also ask Dan about some of his home cooking adventures and hear about an exciting new book in the works.Additional Reading and Listening: Everything You Need to Know About Cascatelli [The Sporkful] Are The Jell-O Heirs Cursed? [The Sporkful] Are Shallots Bull$#!t?  [The Sporkful] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For coffee fans and professionals, there is no more critical resource than the website and media company Sprudge, and we were really happy to have a lively conversation with Sprudge’s cofounder Jordan Michelman. While we do discuss the evolution of the so-called third-wave coffee bar around the globe, we also dive into Jordan’s career in journalism and discuss some of his memorable stories for TASTE and beyond. He won a James Beard Award for his PUNCH story on mineral water, and we talk about how he reports on topics with an interest that borders on obsession.Buy: The New Rules of Coffee Additional Reading: The Future of Ice Cream Is Here, and It’s Vegan [TASTE] Seltzer Is Over. Mineral Water Is Forever. [PUNCH] My Favorite Cold Brew Isn’t Cold Brew at All [TASTE] What Your Hangover Food Says About You [TASTE] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For many followers of the home cooking internet, Jenny Rosenstrach’s Dinner: A Love Story has been a steady hand holding the whisk for the past decade. She recently released the New York Times best seller The Weekday Vegetarians. As the name suggests, Jenny’s vision is of a world where plant-based eating becomes more of a Monday-through-Friday habit than a life-altering stricture. In this fun conversation, we talk about cookbooks, writing a weekly newsletter, and what’s next for one of our favorite food writers around.Also in this episode, TASTE editors Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard discuss three things each of them have been excited to eat, cook, match, and read lately.Additional Reading, Listening, and Cooking: The Weekday Approach to Eating Less Meat [TASTE] The Roast Chicken Conspiracy [Cup of Jo] Black Calamari Orzo [Kalustyans] Should You Write a Cookbook? [Everything Cookbooks] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re a fan of recipes that make clever use of a handful of ingredients and a few swift moves in the kitchen, then chances are, you’ve probably cooked an Ali Slagle recipe. Maybe it was her margherita pizza reimagined as beans on toast, or maybe it was her oat milk chocolate pudding. Ali’s new book, I Dream of Dinner, is full of these types of recipes that manage to be both wildly efficient and gently playful at the same time. In this episode, we talk about the book and Ali’s life on the road this past year, developing recipes from a camper van.Also in this episode, TASTE editors Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard discuss three things each of them have been excited to eat, cook, or read lately.Check out Ali’s Book: I Dream of DinnerAdditional Reading: I’ve Made Everything from Gnocchi to Mapo To ] fu in My Camper Van’s Kitchen [The Strategist] Masa Harina Cornbread [Los Angeles Times] Eric Kim’s Maple Milk Bread [The New York Times] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’ve long been fans of Jenny G. Zhang’s incisive journalism and podcasting, and we couldn’t wait to have the current Gawker editor and writer on the show. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about food in the time of TikTok, Zhang’s memorable 2018 Eater story about Pizza Hut in China, and the regular food she covers in her Gawker column Regular Food Reviews. We also talk about the world of NFTs in food. Additional Reading and Listening: American Pie [Eater] Why do people on TikTok Chew Like This? [Gawker] I’m Sick of Scrolling Past Essays to Get to Recipes I’m Not Paying For [Eater] Give Your Dumpling a Crispy Skirt [TASTE] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, we have a great conversation with Emily Weinstein, the Food and Cooking editor of the New York Times. We’ve been great admirers of the work at NYT Cooking, and we took the opportunity to cover many subjects in home cooking and food media. We talk about what makes a great story and some of the cooking trends Weinstein is most interested in covering. We also discuss Weinstein’s long journey working at the paper, starting as a dining listings fact-checker and rising to various editorial roles, eventually taking the top spot. Also on the episode, TASTE editors Anna Hezel and Matt Rodbard have a discussion about language, particularly the words they’ve effectively banned from the pages of TASTE. Can you guess what they are?Additional Reading: Subscribe to Emily’s newsletter: Five Weeknight Dishes  The Fish That Makes Me Want to Cook [New York Times] One Huge Hog, One Long Day and a Nourishing Southern Tradition [New York Times] Why Does Every Recipe Have to Be Magic? [TASTE] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices