Special Sauce with Ed Levine

Sometimes, my Special Sauce interviews are the best way to catch up with old friends and colleagues. I was reminded of that when Chris Ying and Ivan Orkin, co-authors of The Gaijin Cookbook: Japanese Recipes from a Chef, Father, Eater, and Lifelong Outsider, walked into the studio. The first thing you have to know about Ivan and Chris is that they are great company. The second is that, since they've worked together for long enough that they've established an easy rapport, one that comes through in every one of their exchanges. Consider this snippet of our conversation, when we on what role cleaning plays in becoming a chef or cook in a restaurant. Ivan: I was a dishwasher. Chris: As all good cooks should start. Ivan: I agree. If you don't know how to clean, then you can't cook. Chris: If you don't love cleaning... Ivan: I have to say, that as I become a better cook I've learned to actually love cleaning. I mean, when I cook, man, you should see it. I mean it is sparkly...When I talk to a young cook it's always, "Look, I promise you, when you hit that point when you can have your station be clean, you'll know that you're a good cook, because what happens is if your station is messy you can't see what you're doing and you lose track." When I was leading the kitchen, I'd say, "Everybody stop. Nobody cooks. We clean now for five minutes. Everybody straightens, refills, get it all together. Everything gets wiped down. Wash your hands. Everything gets set. It's in moments like this one where you can see why both Ivan Ramen: Love, Obsession, and Recipes from Tokyo's Most Unlikely Noodle Joint and Gaijin Cookbook are compelling reads, even as they are also wonderful cookbooks. I want to note, too, that this episode also features advice from both J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who answers a pressing culinary question about what it means to marinate something "overnight," which was submitted to the digital mailbag by Camille Germany. And then, with Thanksgiving just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to check in with Daniel Gritzer about the art and science of gravy. 
 To hear how you can get your gravy right this year, how long you should really be marinating meat, and the first part of my conversation with Ivan Orkin and Chris Ying, you're going to have to give this episode a listen. It will be time well spent, I can promise you that. The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/11/special-sauce-ivan-orkin-and-chris-ying-on-the-gaijin-cookbook.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Special Sauce this week, I had the pleasure of continuing my deep dive into the history of fast food with Adam Chandler, the author of Drive-Thru Dreams. But before I tell you more about that conversation, we kicked off this episode, as we always do, with another round of "Ask Kenji." Serious eater Nick Bastow asks Kenji why minced meat has to be cooked before it's added to a sauce, such as a Bolognese or chili. Kenji explains that it's not just about rendering excess fat but also about creating the right texture- which will be different if you're making, for example, his chili sauce for burgers and hot dogs rather than the other recipes named above: "In that recipe, what we actually do is, we take the meat, we don't brown it at all, we add our liquid to it, and we kind of break the meat up in the liquid. And the texture you get from that is completely, completely different.... Like a very chunky paste. So, rather than a chili texture, where you have big chunks of meat that are kind of bound in the sauce, you end up with a much looser- I don't know how to describe it without being completely unappetizing, but it's like a sludge." Though a delicious sludge, to be sure. And, er, speaking of meat in unusual surroundings, Adam Chandler tells a great story about the real-life Colonel Harland Sanders, who sold fried chicken from a gas station in southeastern Kentucky for 20 years before "KFC" ever became a household name. Apparently, Sanders wasn't necessarily the courtly Southern gentleman the company portrays him as; according to Chandler, "He actually got into a feud over roadway traffic being diverted from a [gas] station and shot a guy." The story, which didn't make it into Chandler's book, just gets stranger from there. Beyond telling the fascinating origin tales of Sanders and many other fast food chain founders, Chandler's terrific read also connects the evolution of fast food to the overall history of American culture in the 20th century, starting with the spread of motor vehicles and the increased mobility that that afforded some Americans. "[They wanted] food that was quick and easy, to go, which relates to the White Castle phenomenon in the '20s. This is 100 years ago. And wanting familiar experiences, wanting something that seemed safe. We didn't trust meat. We'd all read The Jungle and were afraid of ground beef. And so to have a restaurant, and eventually a chain, produce the exact same experiences over and over again, in stores that look the exact same, was comforting. And now, that could not be less comforting at all. We want personalized- it sounds dystopian to go into a place and say, 'I'm going to have the exact same experience wherever I go. It's going to look the same.' But a hundred years ago, that was a huge relief." Finally, Stella Parks, the bravest Serious Eater among us, gives us step-by-step instructions for making one of her greatest discoveries, toasted sugar; a kind of dry caramel that's made simply by heating ordinary white sugar in a low oven for several hours. The result is a less sweet form of… Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week's Special Sauce episode kicks off with Serious Eater Marc Lampert asking Kenji about the process of cooking with ingredients packed with umami. "Does umami cook out like an acid would?" Marc asked. Here's part of Kenji's response: "A general rule of thumb for cooking is if you can smell it that means that its concentration in the pot is going down...So if you are cooking a stew and it smells like there's this wonderful red wine aroma that means that the more you smell red wine in your house, the less is left in the stew. There's a finite bucket of it, and if it's in your house then it's not in your pot." With Marc's question squared away, the episode moves on to my far-reaching conversation about fast food with former Atlantic staff writer Adam Chandler, the author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom. He described to me the high school fast food ritual that started his journey: "On weekend nights, we would all pile into our cars and go to Whataburger. It was the last thing we did before we rushed across Houston to go home for our curfews. And that was our sacred ritual. I have the fondest memories of sitting down, and having breakfast with my friends right before we all went to bed...They have something called a breakfast taquito, which is eggs, a tortilla, hash browns, and American cheese...It's my deep-fried madeleine right there. It's just perfect." I asked Adam why that taquito was perfect, and he said, "It was a comfort food for me. I think that was all I really considered it to be as something that even the adult menus at fast food restaurants kind of feel like a kid's menu. There's something about eating something with your hands, and taking it out of paper wrapping that feels kind of like a celebratory innocent thing...There was no formality required." Adam and his wife even celebrate Valentine's Day with fast food. "We have a ritual for the last four years. We've gone to White Castle on Valentine's Day, so I have to do a special shout out for that because I don't know if you know this, at White Castle, they do table service every Valentine's Day. They have a red tablecloth." Finally, the episode moves on to Daniel Gritzer, who talked about his favorite ways to cook a steak, which includes a technique that many cooks have been told is verboten. He said he does use a smoking hot pan, but then he busted a myth about flipping your steak just once while cooking. To hear the rest of Kenji's explanation of how to use flavor agents, lots more fast food wisdom from Adam Chandler, and Daniel's steak-cooking tips, you'll just have to listen to the whole episode. The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/10/special-sauce-kenji-on-cooking-with-fish-sauce-and-adam-chandler-on-fast-food.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week's episode of Special Sauce kicks off with our new culinary Q&A segment, "Ask Kenji." At the behest of listener Dave Shorr, Kenji lays down the law on the best way to freeze chicken. It’s a simple process that includes placing chicken pieces into a zipper-lock bag and pouring in a saltwater brine. Tune in to learn more about why- and be sure to read up on the benefits of freezing flat. Next, Little Tong Noodle Shop owner Simone Tong explains how she came to open a restaurant serving mixian. These rice noodles, which are typically served in a brothy sauce with an array of toppings, hail from China’s Yunnan Province, and were largely unfamiliar to her customers. We both agreed that building a restaurant around a relatively unknown dish might not have been the wisest business decision, but she was undeterred. "I was naive and I was brave," she says. “I was like a New Yorker, confident." Tong’s confidence and bravery were well rewarded. "Yeah, like you and many other food writers, supporters and foodies, they eat my food and they decided that they like it and they share the stories...and slowly, gradually people come. People come and I cook." Finally, we listen to Serious Eats' very own pastry wizard Stella Parks as she tackles an at-home version of the famed (enormous) Levain chocolate chip cookie. “These cookies are no joke,” she says. “They came not to play, but to slay. You can kill a man with these cookies. Not that you should, but if you needed to, it would certainly get the job done.” You can watch the full video of her process and get the recipe for those cookies right here. The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/preview?record=448957 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week's Special Sauce kicks off with our new culinary Q&A segment, "Ask Kenji." This time around, Kenji schools us and serious eater Paul Anderson on the differences between cornstarch and flour when used as thickeners. Among them: Unlike flour, "cornstarch tends to break down when you hold it hot," Kenji says. "So you've been to a Chinese buffet, and they have the pot of hot and sour soup that's been sitting there all day, that's usually thickened with cornstarch, and as it sits in that steam table over the day, it'll actually get thinner and thinner.... [it] breaks down over time. So, a sauce that you made [that] was nice and thick and glossy the day before, when you microwave it and reheat it the next day, it might end up really thin and watery." Keep that in mind next time you're wondering why your takeout leftovers don't hold up so well- and when you're making big batches of your own saucy dishes that you hope will last the weekend. After that, we meet Little Tong Noodle Shop chef and restaurateur Simone Tong, who has made her Yunnan-style mixian noodles required eating (and ensured their place on our list of best NYC eats under $15. Tong tells us about her initial experiments in cooking, as a high school student in Melbourne, Australia. In Australia, she first discovered the joys of Vietnamese pho, and cherries: "I had cases and cases of cherries. I have this microwave, so I'm like, I want to make fried rice in the microwave with egg. And so I ate that for a week, and then during exam time...I decided to mix salad with Caesar salad dressing and soy sauce." Despite her adventurous tastes, there's one very basic ingredient that Tong still can't personally get behind—of course, you'll have to listen to the episode to learn what that is. Finally, we check in on what's been happening in the kitchen lately at Serious Eats HQ, where Senior Culinary Editor Sasha Marx describes his process for making homemade trapizzini, a terrific Italian street food invented by Roman pizzaiolo Stefano Callegari. "It combines Roman pizza al taglio, which is our equivalent of pizza by the slice, and the tramezzino, which is a type of sandwich served in Italy that's made on white bread cut into triangles," Sasha explains. The result is a thick, puffy, beautifully golden focaccia-like bread, ready to be split open and filled with whatever strikes your fancy, from meatballs to stracciatella cheese to marinated artichokes. You can get the recipe and/or watch Sasha making this elevated take on a Pizza Pocket here. The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/10/simone-tong-starches-trapizzini.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For the first segment of this episode of Special Sauce 2.0, Kenji takes a question from serious eater Phil on how to make naan in a Big Green Egg. It starts with our grilled naan recipe and ends with a 60- to 90-second bake on a pizza stone. Next, ice cream Jedi Master Nicholas Morgenstern, of Morgenstern’s Finest Ice Cream, talks about how he comes up with his notoriously inventive flavors, like Burnt Sage, Black Pepper Molasses, or the Banana Kalamansi ice cream he had me taste on mike. His ice creams are excellent on their own, but Morgenstern also has a sundae bar in his shop. Why? "The ice cream sundae has come to represent the egalitarian indulgence that ice cream can be in this country...everyone can have an ice cream sundae,” he told me. “Ice cream is already strictly an indulgence, and you're taking it to another level by adding the things that if you were a child and could have whatever you wanted, you would have on there. It turns out everyone wants to have that." To prove his point, he also came to the studio with a seriously delicious chocolate peanut butter sundae he's named the Rosenthal, named after friend-of-Special-Sauce Phil Rosenthal, the host of "Somebody Please Feed Phil" on Netflix. The final segment of the episode captures low-key rock-star Chicago chef Rick Bayless teaching me the secrets of making the perfect fresh ginger sparkling margarita. Bayless is a master storyteller and explainer, and he does it all without a script or a teleprompter- pretty darn impressive. With these three great guests, it's an episode you won't want to miss. The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/10/nick-morgenstern-kenji-rick-bayless.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This week Serious Eaters get to see the all-new Special Sauce format we've cooked up for the new season. Every episode of Special Sauce 2.0 will start off with "Ask Kenji," a brief section in which J. Kenji Lopez-Alt will answer a pressing question one of our readers has sent in. We're going to do one of these every week, so keep those questions coming. This week the question comes from Tucker Colvin, who asks Kenji which outdoor pizza oven Kenji recommends. After "Ask Kenji," each week we'll have on a guest, and this week that guest is ice cream wizard Nicholas Morgenstern, whose eponymous ice cream shop in New York's Greenwich Village offers 88 flavors. As my friend Brian Koppelman said on his podcast, "The Moment," Morgenstern is Willy Wonka of ice cream. He also happens to be an extremely thoughtful person; for example, when I asked him why he chose to devote his life to ice cream, he replied, "The product itself is a terrific vehicle for expression for me...It's become more and more interesting to me to think about it as a cultural reference point, especially in America, and what it means to Americans, and why it's so important." Finally, at the end of every episode, we'll check in with the test kitchen crew at Serious Eats World HQ. This week, Daniel Gritzer gives us his definitive take on the pros and cons of refrigerating tomatoes. So do give Special Sauce 2.0 a listen. I hope you, like me, think it's snappy, informative, and surprising.   https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/09/introducing-special-sauce-2-point-0.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Part two of my at times emotionally overwhelming interview with Tom Roston, author of The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World: The Twin Towers, Windows on the World, and the Rebirth of New York, focused on the employees of Windows on the World who were in the North Tower's iconic restaurant on September 11, 2001, all of whom tragically died that day. According to Roston, "there were immigrants from, I think it was over 25 nations.... People from Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico." For many of these employees, getting a job at the prestigious institution was a watershed moment in their lives. "It was like, basically, you made it. This is going to be your ticket to whatever it was, or maybe this is just the answer and you don't need to fight anymore, and then it was gone." As Roston and I discussed, those employees who weren't in the restaurant that morning didn't escape completely unscathed, and each was profoundly impacted in their own way. These survivors ranged from servers to a sous chef to the executive chef, Michael Lomonaco, who happened to be in an appointment in the retail concourse of the building at the time of the attack and struggled with tremendous survivor's guilt afterward. Apart from those who lost their lives, Roston said, "think about all these restaurant workers who were so irrevocably affected by this event...and they walk amongst us. There was no victim compensation fund for these people. They live with it. They live with it every day, the fact that their best friend died and they didn't die." In a way, the effect of 9/11 on the Windows staff was a microcosm of its effect on all of New York. "There are different layers of victim. The victim spectrum is very long and wide, and everyone felt it," Roston said. "I think it's interesting to think...about the city of New York, and how it was a victim." Asked if a place with the spirit of Windows on the World could ever exist in New York again, Roston stressed the restaurant's connection to a different time in the city's history. "There was a romanticism back then, in the '70s, and there was a belief in certain things. Now, we're much more sporadic. It's about whether or not you can put it on Instagram, and attention spans are so fast and quick, but for me, I can see it all over the city, really. Not all of the city, but there are a lot of places where you can feel the spectacular spirit of the city." Our conversation was both wrenching and edifying, just like Roston's book. This episode of Special Sauce is not an easy listen, but it is an essential one. -- The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/09/special-sauce-tom-roston-part-2.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

No matter where you were when the two planes hit the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, you were profoundly affected by the events of that day. And if you, like me, were at all involved in the food culture at that moment, your thoughts quickly turned to Windows on the World, the glitzy restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower, where visitors could enjoy unparalleled views while sipping $5 drinks (at the adjoining Greatest Bar on Earth) or dropping serious coin for a celebratory dinner. One hundred seventy employees and patrons of the restaurant died that day. Author Tom Roston, this week's Special Sauce guest, has written The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World: The Twin Towers, Windows on the World, and the Rebirth of New York, a compelling and doggedly reported book that details the history of both Windows on the World and the Twin Towers, from their inception to their demise. As Roston says, "It's no coincidence that the book is coming out in September, right around 9/11, because it's when we are all forced to remember. Even though we are all thinking about it. I think so many of us always have it in the back of our minds.... I didn't lose anyone, but as a New Yorker, my city suffered. It just makes sense when you're...putting a book out, let's do it when this is part of the conversation. And I want the life of this restaurant to be a part of the conversation about 9/11, because it's not just about the tragedy." Roston was particularly drawn to the poignant stories of the many immigrants from all over the world who worked at Windows on the World. "...There are these stories that have gone untold. We experienced 9/11, we think of this smoke, we think of these awful things, potentially. Or people go to the memorial, and they commemorate what happened. But it was interesting to me as a storyteller to say, 'Well, what about all these stories that haven't been told?' And it turned out they were these incredible stories, like from September 10th. This range of experience of life that happened in the restaurant that, of course, is heavy with meaning and profundity when you consider what happened the next day." These next two Special Sauce episodes with Roston moved me to tears, and I imagine they will move many other serious eaters in the same way. -- The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/09/special-sauce-tom-roston-part-1.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In part two of my thought-provoking interview with San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho, we dove right into how she thinks about restaurant criticism. Soleil explained, "I like to think of restaurants as texts in the same way that you read a book and then you extrapolate upon who wrote the book, when did they write it, why did they write it, what did the audience think at the time? What does it say about society at the time? What kind of snapshot is it? You're really reading it for meaning, and I think restaurants, you can take the same way." When she took the Chronicle job, Soleil announced that she was banning certain words from her reviews, including a widely used adjective like “ethnic.” “When you say ethnic restaurants, I would beg you, not you Ed, but people who are listening, to think about what kinds of restaurants you're including under that umbrella. Are only some restaurants under that umbrella or all restaurants, because don't we all have ethnicity?" Soleil takes her responsibilities seriously. Very seriously. She was recently quoted as asking, ”What if I screw up and no one ever hires a queer woman of color for a role like this again?" I asked her to expand on that worry. "I get...a lot of messages from young people, younger than me, who are coming up or who are just reading my work and find me inspiring. And so I take that to heart as something that tells me to tread lightly, to be honest with who I am, but to also make sure that the door is open even wider for them.” To find out what other words and phrases Soleil refuses to use in her reviews, and why she gave a lukewarm review to the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, you're just going to have to listen. It’ll be well worth your time to do so. The full transcript for this episode can be found over here at Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/08/special-sauce-soleil-ho-on-representation-in-food-media.html Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices