podcast

As we approach our 500th episode, we are bringing back two memorable episodes from 2018, our first year of the podcast. Samin Nosrat is a chef and the author of the legendary cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat. This episode was our very first, and it was recorded at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn on July 12, 2018. We talked to Samin about “too-mami” (cooking with too much umami), angry letters, and the differences between brands of kosher salt—that is, not all kosher salt is the same.  Also on the show is a great conversation with Flynn McGarry. He’s the chef-owner of Gem Wine and Gem Home in New York City. In this episode, we discuss his time working at Los Angeles restaurant Alma at age 13, while being homeschooled, and his famous pop-ups even earlier in his career. The journey is all documented in the great film Chef Flynn, and we get into Flynn’s many travels and eventual business opening in NYC—the most competitive and cutthroat restaurant city in America. Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We’d love to hear from you. 

Nicola Lamb is a pastry chef and recipe developer based in London. After training in some of London and New York’s top bakeries, like Dominique Ansel, Ottolenghi, and Happy Endings, she launched the pop-up bakery lark! and the popular newsletter Kitchen Projects—and now she’s written a wonderful debut cookbook, Sift, that’s truly the most comprehensive baking book I’ve read in years. It’s so fun to have Nicola on the show to nerd out about pastry process and much more. Also on the show, Matt has a great conversation with Hetal Vasavada discussing her great new cookbook, Desi Bakes: 85 Recipes Bringing the Best of Indian Flavors to Western-Style Desserts. Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We’d love to hear from you.  MORE FROM NICOLA LAMB & HETAL VASAVADA:Kitchen Projects [Substack]A crash course in better baking: Ella Risbridger meets Nicola Lamb [Financial Times]Badam Burfi Bark [NYT]

"I need to be going to the Trumpy diner and just putting up a good hang in my little short shorts."

Nate, DEM, Dave, and DJ Cutso dissect Method Man's debut album Tical

Lisa Kyung Gross is the founder and CEO of the League of Kitchens, an immigrant-led, home-based cooking school that launched in New York City in 2014. Its instructors are 14 mothers and grandmothers from Indonesia, Mexico, Lebanon, Burkina Faso, and beyond, and now their culinary wisdom is being preserved in a new book: The League of Kitchens Cookbook. It’s truly so special having Lisa on the show to talk about how she finds these instructors and how the book came to life.  Also on the show we hear from Rogelio Garcia talking about his new book Convivir: Modern Mexican Cuisine in California's Wine Country. Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We’d love to hear from you. 

Tom Colicchio joined us in the studio for a really amazing conversation. Tom is a longtime chef and behind the restaurants Craft, Gramercy Tavern, and dozens more. He’s also the longtime head judge on the show Top Chef. Tom just released his memoir (with recipes), Why I Cook, and we get into how he’s long been at the heart of culinary innovation and policy. We talk about his early days cooking in New York City and how he came together with Danny Meyer and many others to invent a new style of restaurant cooking that is still influential today. We also discussed the recent election—and his thoughts on possibly running for US Congress.  Do you enjoy This Is TASTE? Drop us a review on Apple, or star us on Spotify. We’d love to hear from you.  MORE FROM TOM COLICCHIO:Caviar and Cocaine [Town and Country]Tom Colicchio on how cooking saved his life [MSNBC]