Special Sauce with Ed Levine

I'm going to go out on a limb here, or perhaps I should say on a sprig of rosemary: For those who care deeply about the state of home cooking today, the food-journalism landscape, or the Grateful Dead, this week's episode of Special Sauce, part two of my conversation with Milk Street founder Chris Kimball, is a must-listen. Going back over the transcript, I marveled anew at just how smart and thought-provoking and, yes, persnickety the bespectacled, bow tie–wearing Mr. Kimball really is, on every subject: how Serious Eats culinary director, Kenji López-Alt, was just as science-driven and obsessive about rigorous testing when he worked for Chris at Cook's Illustrated as he is now, the humorous side of Abraham Lincoln, the range of spices found in the cuisine of the Ottoman Empire, and the benefits of not just giving home cooks what they want, to name a few. It may be my favorite Special Sauce ever—it's that good—and if this podcast weren't already free, I'd offer a money-back guarantee that serious eaters everywhere will feel the same way after listening. (And if you don't, let us know. We'd love to hear your feedback.) Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you're interested at all in food media you're going to love my Special Sauce conversation with Milk Street founder and seminal food publishing guru Chris Kimball. Chris is insanely smart, incredibly provocative, and very good company if you like your company opinionated, outspoken, and a little bit prickly.   Here are a few gems (or should I say crumbs?) from the first part of our conversation: "You know, I just did a Twitter contest about bad substitutions. Two of my favorites were, 'Instead of mint I use mint toothpaste,' which I just love. And my other one, which was a kid's, said, "Instead of chocolate they use chocolate ex-lax because it kind of looks like chocolate." But when you get into that muddy world..."   Of course, I asked Chris what life was like at the Kimball family table: "[It] was formal, seven o'clock every night, jacket and tie, fingernails clean. I'm not making this up...Well, the best thing about the table ... I mean the food was good, but the conversation was great. I mean we were expected at an early age to know what's going on and say something intelligent. So we were part of the conversation. So I developed an early love of argument or discussion. I love arguments."   Chris also has some strong opinions on whether people should pay for content: "People always said, 'Why do you charge for your content online?' And I said, 'Well why should I give it away? I mean this costs a lot of money.' I have people flying to South Africa and to the Middle East and doing this new project. It's expensive. And we have cooks, and we pay a lot of money in rent, and you know we need money to pay our bills. And so I'm perfectly happy to say to people, 'Look. If you'd like to participate it's $20 or $30 a year. It's sure money."   I had a blast talking to Chris, and I think Serious Eaters everywhere will have a blast listening to him, too. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When–and it should be when, not if–you listen to part two of my Special Sauce interview with Adam Driver, my guess is you'll be as awed as I was by his bandwidth, his intellectual curiosity, and the way he thinks about food and life. You'll learn, for instance, that he chooses roles based in large part on the director involved in the project, which makes sense in light of the fact that he's worked with directors like Joel and Ethan Coen, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Soderbergh. And you'll learn that Adam had been working in theater for years with world-class playwrights like Tony Kushner (he played the role of Louis Ironson in the 2011 Signature Theater revival of Angels in America) for years before anyone saw him in Girls.   I'd read somewhere that Adam had, at one point, eaten a whole chicken every day for lunch. When I asked him why, he laughed and said, "I don't know. I couldn't answer that. I put myself on this big physical regime coming right from the military that I thought was...to challenge myself, and a whole chicken was part of it. One day I had a whole chicken and a foot-long sub from Subway and I'm like, 'This has got to stop.'"   We also talked about who he'd invite to the table for his last supper (family wasn't allowed) of meatloaf: Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, Stanley Kubrick, and Cy Twombly. And, as usual, I asked him about what people around the world would be doing on a holiday held in his name. You're going to have to listen to find out what he said, but suffice it to say it involves a lot of wind sprints and taking care of stray dogs, and that the world might be a better place if we did in fact celebrate Adam Driver Day.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For the first episode of the new season of Special Sauce I invited on a very special guest: the brilliant, original, and always thoughtful Adam Driver. We talked about his unusual path to an acting career, which took him through the Marines. His time in the armed services had a profound influence on his life and work, which he talks about in poignant detail. And we talked about Arts in the Armed Forces, the extraordinary non-profit he and his wife, Joanne Tucker, founded. The organization puts on performances of monologues and music for military personnel and their families both domestically and all around the world.   Adam and I spoke about a range of other topics, including how he managed to lose 50 pounds for his role in Martin Scorsese's "Silence," and how he has taken up cooking–he admits to not being very good at it–on his infrequent breaks. I also got the opportunity to ask about the dinner Kenji had recently cooked for Adam and Joanne.   Adam Driver is funny, smart, thoughtful, and loves to eat and cook. In short, he's the perfect Special Sauce guest, as you'll find out when you check out Part 1 of his visit to the Special Sauce studios.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In part two of my far-ranging conversation with chef, pizzaiolo, and pizza poet laureate Chris Bianco, we talk about so many things, including his reaction to winning the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southwest in 2003. He was the first and only pizza chef to win a regional award. Chris was surprised, to say the least. "I'm incredibly grateful for any recognition from peers," he says, but he also notes that it was unsettling. "I was uncomfortable with it because I never believed in the the best of anything...I'm just a guy that went to work., and I've been fortunate and I've worked hard...It was very humbling and I was very grateful, but it was probably the first time when people came to check me out instead of eating, which kind of broke my heart, you know?"   Chris also reluctantly discusses his very public lifelong battle with asthma, which he credits with keeping him grounded as it gave him "a sense of mortality." But his choice of profession and his work ethic exacerbated his condition. "After years of breathing and inhaling flour, it gave me...they called it like a baker's lung kind of a thing." A doctor gave him a rather explicit warning: "Hey, man, you might want to redirect your energies if you want to hang around."    So Chris stepped away from the oven and set out to achieve the same balance in his life that he had achieved with his transcendent pizza. He started growing and canning delicious tomatoes with two partners. He got married and started a family. But working the oven, which he mans like a ballet dancer, still holds a special allure for him: "I worked a double shift on Sunday. One of my guys went on vacation. And it was great fun for me, and I loved it so much to be at the oven. I just can't do it 18 hours a day, seven days a week anymore."   What would he do for his last supper? Chris says he'd eat cheese (maybe a Stilton) and crackers accompanied by a great bottle of wine, by himself. As for what would happen all over the world on Chris Bianco Day, there was laughter in his voice when he said, "Probably people are writing their mayors right now saying, "Who okayed this?" Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

My guest on this week's Special Sauce is Chris Bianco, the man who makes my favorite pizza in the world. The pies he puts out at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, AZ, would definitely be on the table at my last supper. And while Chris is also the author of the new book Bianco: Pizza, Pasta, and Other Food I Like, which every aspiring pizzaiolo should pick up, I invited Chris onto the podcast because he's the poet laureate of pizza, someone who truly connects the dots of food and life in unique fashion. The centrality of food and cooking to his identity is evident in everything he talks about, from the lesson he learned as a child at the Bianco family table ("Food was really as important as your breath, basically.") to the reason why he thinks he has gravitated toward cooking: "I think that I've been very insecure just in my existence, like where I fit in. I wanted to make you happy...I wanted you to like me, whoever you were." And while he's passionate about food, he still has a sense of humor. Consider his description of the way he got started making money cooking in Phoenix: "I was making pasta and mozzarella in my apartment, and I was selling to a couple Italian restaurants at the time. They paid me cash. And I was like, if I got busted, how much time can you do for mozzarella?" Chris also has some sage advice for young chefs: "What I challenge them to do is take everything out of their apartment, their spiritual apartment, and put it on their front lawn, and to see what they have they want to bring back in, and redecorate their life with or their inspirations with." And as for his poetic bent, Chris once told me, "I'm on a mission. I have a responsibility to do something with integrity and dignity. My menu might be small, but to me, it's the biggest thing in the world. Pizza inspires me, fascinates me, and gives me hope." To hear more of Chris's wise words you're just going to have to listen to both this and next week's episodes of Special Sauce. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In part two of my illuminating interview with French-American super chef Daniel Boulud, he and I talk about—believe it or not—airline food. Daniel has designed some business class meals for Air France, and the airline flew me over to Paris to experience his food in the air. While the food was tasty, it wasn't perfect. (Having worked on airline food as a consultant, believe me when I say that "tasty but not perfect" is about as good airline food is going to get.) I asked Daniel how it felt to work within the constraints of airline food preparation, particularly as a self-confessed obsessive perfectionist. "I enjoy the challenge," he replied. "And I hope people appreciate the fact that I'm just trying to elevate the offering." Daniel also talks about a remarkable older book of his, Letters to a Young Chef, which he has updated and is being reissued in October. I asked him about the qualities a young cook has to possess to become a successful chef-restaurateur. "You have to have the passion for hospitality, the passion for making people happy," he said, adding that that passion has to come through in a "respectful, intelligent way." Daniel has a whole lot more to say about his career and his success in the restaurant business, and he also lets me in on how he'd like the world to celebrate a hypothetical Daniel Boulud Day, and on which band he'd like to perform at his last supper. You'll just have to listen to the episode to find out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

My guest on this week's Special Sauce is Daniel Boulud, whom I have known for more than 25 years. We first met when Alex Lee, his longtime chef de cuisine and my regular squash partner, asked me to take Daniel on a New York Eats food adventure (Alex now works for über restaurateur Stephen Starr). Over the course of that afternoon, Daniel tasted everything from Nova Scotia smoked salmon and cream cheese on a bagel at Russ & Daughters to superb Polish ham made by Kurowycky and Sons in the East Village (which, sadly, is no longer with us). I found myself in awe of Daniel's insatiable intellectual curiosity about everything and everybody in the food culture, his devotion to his craft, and his passion for deliciousness. And I think you'll immediately notice all those characteristics on full display in this week's episode. How devoted is Daniel to his craft? He started cooking professionally at the tender age of fourteen—at a Michelin three-star restaurant, no less. A month later he was plucking pheasants and other game birds in a restaurant basement for 14 or 15 hours at a stretch. Did it phase him? Nah, he'd already been doing similar work at his family's farm outside Lyon for many years. If you listen to him rhapsodize about learning to make a dish like ecrevisses à la nage (crayfish in a vegetable broth), I promise it will make you hungry. You'll also hear how well his curiosity served him when he ate a breakfast of tête de veau (calf's head) washed down with Beaujolais, with many of France's leading chefs, at the big market at Lyon. That's quite a breakfast, but, then again, Daniel's quite a chef. I hope all you Serious Eaters will listen to, learn from, and enjoy this week's Special Sauce episode, which is entirely devoted to the culinary education of one of the greatest chefs in the world.   Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Welcome back for part two of my Special Sauce interview with designer and architect David Rockwell. In this week's episode, David talks about what the initial design process for projects is like, and about some of the challenges he faces when talking to his clients: "One of the catchphrases for clients to say is, 'You know, I'd really like a timeless design.' Well, who would not like a timeless design? Timeless design has to be a result, not an intention. I think if you're afraid to go through timely to get to timeless, you end up with petrified."   As someone who was a consultant for many years before I started Serious Eats, I laughed really hard when he said that. And I asked him how he deals with the inevitable ego clashes in his line of work. He quoted Jack O'Brien, one of his favorite theater directors, in response: "'Don't put a hat on a hat.' From a design perspective I take that to mean, you don't want to engage in a project where everyone's going to do the same thing. If you have a client that feels like they know what they want visually, that's a little constricting. I'd rather work with a client who knows what they want emotionally, knows where they want to land."   I also got to ask David which person, living or dead, he'd most like to have lunch with (other than Frank Lloyd Wright). His answer was deceptively obvious: "I think Picasso would be more fun to sit and talk with and get him to scribble on a napkin. God, can you imagine?"  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On this week's episode of the Special Sauce podcast, host Ed Levine talks to David Rockwell, the architect and designer behind every Nobu around the globe, as well as multiple airline terminals and the theater in which the Academy Awards are held. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices