How to shock a badass woman chef In our fourth episode, Nancy talks about winning the James Beard Award for Best Pastry Chef in 1991, and how aghast the presenter, French chef and cookbook author Madeleine Kamman, was that an upstart from California had beat out two famous men with French and Swiss training. The predicted winner was the legendary Albert Kumin, the original pastry chef of The Four Seasons who went on to work in Jimmy Carter’s White House kitchen and founded the now-closed International Pastry Arts Center in in Elmsford, N.Y.“He is one of the only people I know who can labor relentlessly in the kitchen, covering the work of three, while remaining totally calm, good-humored and friendly,” Jacques Pépin once told Nation’s Restaurant News about Kumin, who died in 2016 at the age of 94.Happily the other nominee is still with us. At the time, Jacques Torres was working at Le Cirque where he was famous for, among other things, his miniature edible stove. The youngest person to ever become a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, Torres was Dean of Pastry at The Culinary Institute for 30 years. Today he runs his own chocolate empire. As for Madeleine Kamman … she was a complete badass. She was an outspoken chef, a champion of women and a legendary teacher. Paul Bocuse once called her restaurants “the best in America,” and she was the author of many books, the most notable being “When French Women Cook.” Laurie keeps a copy of “The New Making of a Cook,” the 1997 revision of Kamman’s first cookbook, on her shelf of encyclopedic cookbooks between Shirley Corriher’s “CookWise” and Marion Cunningham’s “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook,” with Julia Child’s “The Way to Cook” a respectful few books away since it’s likely neither of them would have liked to be beside each other. Kamman had a famous rivalry with Julia Child. She pointed out that Julia was neither French nor a chef, but simply an American cooking teacher. Madeleine, on the other hand, was a trained chef with a successful restaurant who also wrote cookbooks and had a television show. “I am not for comparing people, any more than you can compare Picasso to anyone,” she opined with typical modestly. A few years ago Mayukh Sen wrote this article about her in the New Yorker. What we like best about Madeleine? In 1990, she told the L.A. Times writer Rose Dosti that the next generation of great chefs would be American rather than French, and would consist of a 50-50 ratio of women and men. The 50-50 ratio hasn’t quite worked out yet, but Nancy’s win the following year at the James Beard Awards showed that the change Madeleine predicted was already underway. That 1991 ceremony, by the way, was the first time the James Beard Awards as we know them were presented. Nancy had to remind Ruth that she had written about the ceremony — and about Kamman’s reaction to Nancy’s win — in the L.A. Times, not to mention at least one chef’s complaint about a young Wolfgang Puck winning Outstanding Chef of the Year. Here’s an excerpt:“Like every awards ceremony, this one had its moments of controversy. Madeleine Kamman, who was sitting in the front row, shuddered visibly when Nancy Silverton was awarded the prize for best pastry chef over Albert Kumin, the dean of American pastry. ‘Albert Kumin changed pastry in this country,’ Larry Forgione of New York’s An American Place, said later. ‘His achievement should have been recognized. And if Chef of the Year was for career achievement,’ he went on, ‘why wasn’t Andre Soltner (the legendary chef/owner of Lutece) nominated?’ The answer seems to be that … the Beard Awards are centered on the food revolution that has swept America. … So it should come as no surprise that Chef of the Year went to America’s highest-profile young chef, Wolfgang Puck.”It was actually a call Ruth received from New York Times reporter Julia Moskin that got our conversation started about the James Beard Awards. She asked if Ruth would comment on the organization after chef Timothy Hontzas of Johnny’s Restaurant in Homewood, Alabama, was disqualified as a best chef in the South nominee following an allegation that he habitually yelled at his staff and customers. (Hontzas told The Times that the incidents “were not as severe as the accusers described.” He also said that none of the incidents rose to the level of an ethics violation.) The disqualification, an action taken without consulting all of the restaurant awards committee members — who oversee the annual nominee selections on a volunteer basis — led one committee member and a separate judge to resign in protest.Ruth declined the request for comment by Moskin, who teamed with Brett Anderson for an extensive story on the messy process of trying to make the James Beard Awards more equitable and diverse. The article opened with the organization’s investigation into an anonymous complaint about Kentucky-raised chef Sam Fore, whose TukTuk pop-up draws on her Sri Lankan family roots. Fore, who was surprised to discover that her social media posts advocating for victims of domestic violence were the subject of the investigation, said the process was “an interrogation.” Ultimately, she was able to remain a nominee in the Best Chef: Southeast category, although the award went to Terry Koval of The Deer and the Dove in Decatur, Georgia.It’s not the first time the organization has come under scrutiny. In 2005, the president of the James Beard Foundation, Leonard F. Pickell was convicted of stealing more than fifty thousand dollars from the foundation. He was sentenced to one to three years and served about 9 months. He passed away two years later. At this year’s awards ceremony in June, the restaurant awards committee chair Tanya Holland — who is also an acclaimed cookbook author and chef of the late great Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland (fantastic cornmeal waffles) — said from the podium that New Orleans legend Leah Chase once gave her some advice that seemed to apply to the stresses the organization is undergoing as it tries to find the best way to ensure the awards are fair and equitable: “‘Be prepared to get a lot of criticism in this industry, and work with it; you will make mistakes. The important thing is where your heart is and how you move on.’ The universe knows I’ve made numerous mistakes.”L.A. Times journalist Stephanie Breijo, reporting on the ceremony, wrote that Holland told the audience “she has become comfortable being uncomfortable, adding that she is motivated to make the industry better. The efforts of the foundation have made a difference in the diversity of the awards’ nominees and winners, she said, and should be commended.“We’re learning as we go,” Holland said. “It’s not always smooth, but that doesn’t mean we’re not on the right path.”Three Ingredients is a reader-supported publication. To receive posts with bonus material, including recipes, restaurant recommendations and podcast conversations that didn’t fit into the main show, consider becoming a paid subscriber.The endangered 20th-century restaurantWe move from the Beard Awards and a discussion about the mental stress and physical toll restaurant work entails, to an exploration of what makes a 21st century restaurant and how in many parts of the country 20th century restaurants such as diners are closing at an alarming rate. Laurie talks about the closing in May of Los Angeles’ Nickel Diner, which wasn’t technically a 20th century restaurant (it opened in 2008) but had a 20th century soul. Laurie wrote about her last meal at the Nickel, run by Monica May and Kristen Trattner, for the L.A. Times Tasting Notes newsletter. The table was loaded with scrambles, biscuits, homemade pop tarts and of course a maple bacon doughnut, plus marmalade made from blood oranges grown by the artist Ed Ruscha. Here’s an excerpt of the story:All around us customers are giving hugs to May and Trattner as well as Nickel Diner’s servers, many of whom have worked at the Main Street spot for years and have become familiar faces. The customers also hug each other because it’s a kind of reunion for many who are part of the L.A. tribe in love with the diner and the tattooed punk-rock aesthetic that came with the place.“We’re a 20th century restaurant,” May tells us by way of explanation of why she and Trattner think it’s the right time to close. Would they have stayed open if they had gotten one of their grants renewed to feed their neighbors living in the surrounding SROs or if inflation hadn’t raised their operating costs or if the pandemic hadn’t happened? Maybe.But they also feel a change in the city. A few blocks away Suehiro Cafe, another 20th century restaurant that has been on Little Tokyo’s 1st Street for decades and may be the closest thing we have to a “Midnight Diner,” is being forced to move to a new location on Main Street, not far from the Nickel Diner. What difference will a move make? When I walked by the space Suehiro will inhabit later this summer I saw a now-hiring sign and noticed that one of the new jobs listed is “barista.”Old-school Suehiro doesn’t have a barista. Apparently, 21st century Suehiro will have barista-made drinks. If it helps the place stick around for a few more decades, I won’t mind, as long as they still serve the okonomi plate with broiled mackerel and cold tofu. Because as Zen monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki once told writer David Chadwick after he asked the master to summarize Buddhism “in a nutshell,” the answer came down to two words: “Everything changes.” Thank you for reading Three Ingredients. This post is public so feel free to share it.Eating off the cartFinally, we talk about the safety of food carts. In 1995, when Ruth wrote an article for the New York Times about how much she loved street food, she included this interesting detail: “If the idea of eating at food carts frightens you, consider this. Fredric D. Winters, a spokesman for the New York City Health Department, said that of the 1,600 cases of food poisoning reported by doctors in the last three years, only 8 were said to be from food vendors. Only one case actually proved to be food poisoning, and even that case could not definitely be tied to a cart.”You can read the entire article here. And in our bonus “Ingredients” post for paying subscribers, we’ll share Ruth’s recipe for a homemade version of the classic New York food cart dish, curry chicken and rice. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threeingredients.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Nancy, a lover of Diamond Crystal kosher salt, shares her experience of taking it with her to Italy. The discussion focuses on the importance of salt in cooking and the challenges of finding the right type of salt in different countries.

We’re in Hawaii this week — at least Nancy is — and we talk about everything from native fruits to Spam, one of the few foods in the world that Ruth has never eaten. Ruth talks about the Zen of pie making, Nancy gives a shout out to two of her favorite kitchen utensils and Laurie waxes poetic about why Jonathan Gold fell in love with the island. Leaving Hawaii we discuss why failure in the kitchen is a good thing. Then it’s on to the politics of pesto — along with a handy little trick to make it better — even if you’re not doing it by hand. Three Ingredients is a reader-supported publication. To receive posts with bonus material, including recipes, restaurant recommendations and podcast conversations that didn’t fit into the main show, consider becoming a paid subscriber.Our favorite mortar and pestleNancy has shown up at the cooking class she’s conducting in Hawaii with just two treasured pieces of equipment. First and foremost is her beloved mortar and pestle, which is so heavy she’s asked her assistant Juliet to pack it in her suitcase. It’s one originally made for pharmacists and Nancy is so fond of hers that she sometimes buys extras to give to her friends. In fact, she gave one to Ruth years ago and Laurie has had one for decades too.What makes it so special that all three of us have it in our kitchens? Nancy says that while a rougher molcajete is right for guacamole, she loves the smooth surface of her unglazed ceramic mortar and pestle for making mayonnaise, aioli and especially pesto, which she never makes in a food processor. Laurie found this description on the British Museum website that describes why the original Wedgwood & Bentley mortars were considered superior to marble “for the purpose of chemical experiments, the uses of apothecaries, and the kitchen”: “These mortars resist the action of fire and the strongest acids. ... They receive no injury from friction. They do not imbibe oil or any other moisture. They are of a flint-like hardness, and strike fire with steel.”Nancy also loves her trusty Microplane. But then, who doesn’t? It pretty much changed life in the kitchen, as John T. Edge explained in this 2011 story for the New York Times.Note that in our bonus post for Episode 3, available to paying subscribers later this week, we share the recipe for Nancy’s caprese salad, which is on the cover of “The Mozza Cookbook,” plus a pie recipe from Nancy’s new baking book “The Cookie That Changed My Life” and a mini podcast all about salt.Thank you for reading Three Ingredients. This post is public so feel free to share it.A proper luauNearly every year Nancy participates in the Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, founded by chefs Roy Yamaguchi and Alan Wong. It’s an event that grew out of Cuisines of the Sun, which Associated Press writer Barbara Albright once described as “the ultimate food camp.” Nancy happened to be cooking at Cuisines of the Sun the year that Laurie took Jonathan to Hawaii for the first time. Until that trip in the late 1990s, Laurie had only experienced the food of tourist Hawaii and thought that the island destination would be a place where Jonathan could take a vacation from thinking about food in a serious way. Boy was she wrong. When they arrived on the Big Island they were invited to a luau that was unlike any Laurie had ever experienced. Held at Hirabara Farms run by Kurt and Pam Hirabara, who were pioneers in the Hawaii regional cuisine movement, the music, dancing and especially the food — all rooted in Hawaiian culture — were enchanting. There wasn’t a grass skirt in sight. After that trip, Jonathan was smitten. Here’s an excerpt from a story he wrote for Ruth at Gourmet in 2000 describing that party:There may be a prettier acre than Kurt and Pam Hirabara’s up-country farm on the island of Hawaii, where the damp, mounded earth and skeins of perfect lettuces glow like backlighted jade on a wet afternoon. But when the sun comes out and the mist melts away, and through a break in the clouds suddenly looms the enormous, brooding mass of Mauna Kea, the loftiest volcano in the world, it’s hard to imagine where that prettier acre might be.Three hours before chef Alan Wong’s luau at Hirabara Farms, a party celebrating the relationship between the chef and the army of Big Island growers who supply the Honolulu restaurant that has been called the best in Hawaii, the tin roof of the Hirabaras’ long packing shed thrums with rain, and the thin, sweet voice of the late singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole slices through the moist mountain air. Wong’s kitchen manager, Jeff Nakasone, trims purply ropes of venison into medallions for the barbecue, and pastry chef Mark Okumura slaps frosting on a stack of coconut cakes as high as a small man. Lance Kosaka, who is the leader at Wong’s Honolulu kitchen, arranges marinated raw crabs in a big carved wooden bowl. Mel Arellano, one of Wong’s colleagues from culinary school and something of a luau specialist, reaches into a crate and fishes out a small, lemon-yellow guava.“I’ve got to eat me one of them suckas,” he says, and he pops the fruit into a pants pocket.I nibble on opihi, pricey marinated limpets harvested in Maui, and try to gather in the scene. Two of Wong’s younger sisters stir a big pot of the gingery cellophane-noodle dish called chicken long rice; Buzzy Histo, a local kumu hula—hula teacher—crops orchids, exotic lilies, and birds-of--paradise brought over from the farmers market in Hilo. A cheerful neighbor, Donna Higuchi, squeezes poi from plastic bags into a huge bowl, kneading water into the purple goo with vigorous, squishing strokes until the mass becomes fluid enough to spoon into little paper cups. She giggles as she works.“Some people like poi sour,” she says. “I like it frrrr-rresh. Although most people would say I’m not really a poi eater. I like it best with milk and sugar—it’s really good that way.”Her friend stops measuring water into the poi and wrinkles her nose. “Don’t listen to Donna,” she says. “You try your poi with lomilomi salmon.”If you’re hungry for more, here’s an article Jonathan wrote for Food and Wine Magazine, when he visited the islands with Roy Choi. And here’s the L.A. Times story about poi that Laurie talks about in this episode. Poi is a food that most visitors to Hawaii rarely experience in the way it was intended to be eaten. “The mush you might have been served at a hotel luau,” she wrote, “was almost certainly not aged, and probably served plain, which is the rough equivalent of eating potatoes mashed without butter or cream.” Or, as Victor Bergeron, aka Trader Vic, once wrote, “Americans do not appreciate food which is too far out.”Devil in a white can Ruth, Nancy and Laurie all remember Underwood Deviled Ham with great fondness from their childhoods. Surprisingly, this is the entire ingredient list: Ham (Cured With Water, Salt, Brown Sugar, Sodium Nitrite) and Seasoning (Mustard Flour, Spices, Turmeric).It turns out that it’s a very old product. The William Underwood Company began making it in 1868 (soldiers ate a lot of deviled ham during the Civil War), and the company’s logo was trademarked two years later making it the oldest extant American food trademark. And what about that other ham in a can, Spam? As described on the Hormel website, it’s made from six ingredients: “pork with ham meat added (that counts as one), salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite.” We talk about Spam musubi (Spam and sushi rice wrapped with nori), which has been popular in Hawaii for decades — Jonathan called it “the real soul food of Hawaii” in this review of the now-closed Monterey Park restaurant Shakas.Ruth may not be a Spam fan, but our musubi talk prompted her to bring up one of her favorite nori seaweed-wrapped snacks, onigiri. We thought you might like to make your own onigiri. Here’s a recipe from Serious Eats. For more recipes, including one prompted by Ruth talking about the zen of pie making — spending time with her rolling pin makes her very happy in the kitchen — check back later this week for this episode’s bonus post for paying subscribers with a new mini podcast. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threeingredients.substack.com/subscribe

Why do we call Nancy the queen of pistachios? What secrets can Ruth tell us about critic bait? And is Laurie really the only one of the three of us who loves tripe? Also, can food be too flavorful? These are just some of the things we’re talking about in today’s episode, including the vanity of cooking. We dish on show-off chefs and why Nancy says Thomas Keller and Massimo Bottura don’t fit in that category. We talk about why we love Sarah Cicolini’s Rome restaurant Santo Palato and the Pie Room at London’s Holborn Dining Room. Plus, why chefs like Italy’s Franco Pepe and Nancy use dehydrators. And could it be that writer and former “Great British Bake Off” finalist Ruby Tandoh is this generation’s Laurie Colwin? But first, let’s talk pine nuts. Three Ingredients is a reader-supported publication. To receive posts with bonus material, including recipes, restaurant recommendations and podcast excerpts that didn’t fit into the main show, consider becoming a paid subscriber.A better pine nutWould you be shocked to learn that the pine nuts you’re most likely using in your pesto come from China or Siberia?Nancy, of course, knew all about this. But Ruth remained ignorant until a few years ago, at a market in Italy she noticed that the pinoli were much larger than the ones she buys at home.Back in her own kitchen, she scrutinized the pine nuts in her freezer. (Pine nuts are filled with oil, which means that left in the cupboard they quickly go rancid. It’s much safer to store them in the freezer.) Sure enough, the label said something about the various countries the pine nuts might have come from, and not one of them was Italy or the United States.She took out a handful and laid them next to the ones she’d bought in Italy. Half the size! Then she tasted them. Half the flavor! These days she buys her pine nuts from Gustiamo, which owner Beatrice Ughi gets from the west coast of Italy where Pinus Pinea trees, better known as Italian stone pines or umbrella pines, grow. They’re expensive. And they’re worth it. Pro tip from Nancy, who gets pine nuts from Sicily for her Mozza restaurants but also uses the smaller, more common varieties of pine nuts for big batches of pesto. Use pricey larger Italian pine nuts when you want to serve the pine nuts whole, as in the rosemary-pine nut cookies she serves at Pizzeria Mozza with her famous butterscotch budino — we’ve got a recipe below. And if, like Laurie, you were wondering why we don’t just harvest pine nuts from all the pine trees grown in the U.S., here are two articles from 2017 that explore the issue: Modern Farmer calls “the downfall of the American pine nut industry, a truly embarrassing and damaging loss given that the pinyon species in North America can produce nuts (seeds, technically) worth upwards of $40 per pound.” The magazine cites a Civil Eats report that puts part of the blame on a U.S. Bureau of Land Management practice of clearing “thousands of acres” of piñon-juniper woodlands for cattle grazing between the 1950s and ‘70s because the trees were “useless as timber.” The pistachio queen dehydratesNancy practically lives on Turkish pistachios, which are smaller and more flavorful than the American kind. She’s particularly partial to pistachios from Aleppo. There are many sources; one we like in New York is Russ and Daughters. Nancy also loves Sicilian pistachios. But as she discusses in the podcast, if you want to get the nuts both green and crunchy, you’re going to need a dehydrator. “That is,” she says, “the best purchase I’ve ever made.” This Magic Mill is a favorite. Another unexpected chef who uses a dehydrator is Slow Food hero Franco Pepe, who is also Nancy’s favorite pizzaiolo. She rarely spends time in Italy without making a visit to Pepe in Grani, his restaurant in Caiazzo outside of Naples. In fact Nancy is the one who persuaded restaurant critic Jonathan Gold (and Laurie’s late husband) to come to Caizzo for a 2014 Food & Wine article in which he said Franco Pepe made what “is probably the best pizza in the world." Many others, including our friend and Italian food expert Faith Willinger, who first told Nancy about Pepe, agree.So what does a chef like Pepe, who insists on hand mixing his dough and calibrates his pizzas to show off the freshness of his region’s ingredients do with a dehydrator? For one thing, he dehydrates olive and puts them on a dessert pizza with apricots sourced from the volcanic soil of Vesuvius. It’s fantastic. Laurie talked to him for the L.A. Times about what tech can do to save pizza’s future. Read about it here. The Colwin legacyRuby Tandoh! Ruby Tandoh! If you want to read the article we all love — the one that got Ruth to suggest that Tandoh might be this generation’s Laurie Colwin — here it is. Note the excellent title: “The Studied Carelessness of Great Dessert: On croquembouche, Alison Roman, and the art of not trying too hard.” And just in case you don’t know Colwin’s work, here are two stories, one from the New Yorker and one from the New York Times, that talk about the Colwin legacy. As for Tandoh’s Vittles — if you’re not reading it, you’re missing out. You can find it here.Mind and heartThat is Massimo Bottura trying to make Nancy happy. Which he always does.  You probably know that his small restaurant in Modena, Osteria Francescana, has three Michelin stars and was voted the best restaurant in the world twice on the World’s 50 Best list and remains on its Best of the Best list. You might also know that he’s a chef with an extremely interesting mind and a huge heart, who is deeply involved with feeding the hungry of the world.We’ve known (and admired) both Massimo and his elegant American wife Lara Gilmore for a while now. But although Laurie and Nancy had eaten at his Modena restaurant many times, Ruth was late to the game. This is part of what she wrote in 2017, after her first marathon lunch at his restaurant:Leave it to me to go to a four-hour lunch on a day of such intense heat the newspaper headlines all read “Dangerous even for the animals.”  (For the record, it hit 107 degrees.)  … We arrived parched and almost dizzy with heat.Within seconds, we’d forgotten everything but the pure pleasure of listening to Massimo and Lara discuss their various projects (a refettorio in London, another in Burkina Faso and a gelateria in a refugee camp in Greece) — and the meal they were about to serve us.Blown away. That’s my instant review.  If you want more, keep reading.For another perspective on Massimo’s food, Laurie wrote in the L.A. Times about the meal she ate at Osteria Francescana earlier this summer when the chef was revisiting and reconceiving many of his iconic dishes, including tortellini. “Bottura may break the form of a classic dish,” she wrote, “but he almost always brings the flavor back to the nostalgic tastes of his childhood.”Incidentally, Massimo and Lara have a new book, Slow Food Fast Cars, and they will be discussing it with Ruth on Monday night, Dec. 11, at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Come join them!Best comment of this episode? Nancy on croquembouche: “Struggling with your food is not a fun way to cook.”The London Restaurant ListHere are the London restaurants Nancy mentions in this episode.Lyle'sThe Barbary The Palomar: The Pie Room at the Holborn Dining RoomSaborSt. John'sPop Quiz!Can anyone guess the name of the chef standing next to Nancy?Want a recipe from Nancy?If you want recipes inspired by the episode, bonus podcast conversations and more exclusive content from Ruth, Nancy and Laurie, sign up to be a “Three Ingredients” paying subscriber. With this episode, we’re sharing the recipe for Nancy’s famous Butterscotch Budino with Caramel Sauce and Rosemary Pine Nut Cookies. And in our bonus podcast conversation, Ruth has thoughts on the demon cider that kept Americans drunk on apples as well as an easy, delicious recipe for butternut squash with apple cider syrup. Plus, we’ll give you the answer to the pop quiz above. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threeingredients.substack.com/subscribe

The debut episode of “Three Ingredients." Artichokes Alice Waters would hate, fish lessons, trashcan stuffing, a panna cotta cook-off...plus Ruth and Nancy throw lemons at each other. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit threeingredients.substack.com/subscribe