Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: We've only just met, but I'm sure Claire Saffatts and
Speaker 2: I will be friends forever. Being a modern woman, I
Speaker 2: know all about her from her beautiful and brilliant YouTube
Speaker 2: and instagrams, the closest I guess I'll ever come to
Speaker 2: dating online, though I'd have a lot of competition dating Claire.
Speaker 2: She has over a million followers who love her. Claire
Speaker 2: is open and she is honest. She shares with us
Speaker 2: the challenges of baking and of life in general. She's
Speaker 2: a star in a new era of food writers who
Speaker 2: are experts in their knowledge, passionate about their craft, rigorous
Speaker 2: about their work. Claire measured in history and literature at Harvard,
Speaker 2: pursuing her career as an academic. Then one day, in
Speaker 2: her own words, almost by accident, she became the host
Speaker 2: of her own cooking show. Claire has also written two cookbooks,
Speaker 2: Dessert Person and What's for Dessert, both of which are
Speaker 2: New York Times best sellers. I've come to New York
Speaker 2: to meet Claire the Dessert Person, and most of all,
Speaker 2: my new best friend. One million other friends. I'm not worried.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: It's great to see you. And here we are in
Speaker 2: New York, beautiful day after the eclipse. Did you see
Speaker 2: the eclipse?
Speaker 1: It was clowny where I was. Oh, it was in
Speaker 1: Hudson Valley. We're in Orange County, sort of far from
Speaker 1: the Cat's Skills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was born in Monticello.
Speaker 1: Oh, we're not too far. We're actually very close. It
Speaker 1: was clear all day until about three pm, and then
Speaker 1: I couldn't see anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Great thing about being here us today was the
Speaker 2: amount of people on the streets, in the on the rooftops.
Speaker 2: The people want to share seeing something, don't they. You know,
Speaker 2: it was so beautiful to see the kind of movement
Speaker 2: on the streets of everybody on the streets.
Speaker 1: Yeah. New York comes alive in spring.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, I really And today is a beautiful day.
Speaker 2: So we're here and I am so happy to meet you.
Speaker 2: And my favorite dessert is vanilla ice cream, and it's
Speaker 2: the one you went right too. So would you like
Speaker 2: to read it?
Speaker 1: I'd love to, Okay, vanilla ice cream one point seventy
Speaker 1: five liters double cream, four hundred and fifty mili liters
Speaker 1: whole milk, four fresh vanilla pods, split lengthways, fifteen egg yolks,
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty grams cast or sugar. Combine the
Speaker 1: cream and milk in a large saucepan. Scrape the vanilla
Speaker 1: seeds out of the pods into the pan using a knife.
Speaker 1: Then add the pods to heat until just below boiling point.
Speaker 1: Remove from the heat. Beat the egg yolks and sugar
Speaker 1: together until pale and thick. Pour a little of the
Speaker 1: warm cream into the eggyoak mixture and stir. Return this
Speaker 1: to the rest of the cream in the saucepan, and
Speaker 1: cook gently over a low heat, stirring constantly to prevent
Speaker 1: the custard from curdling. When the custard is thickened enough
Speaker 1: to coat the back of the spoon, strain it into
Speaker 1: a heatproof bowl and leave to cool. Pour into an
Speaker 1: ice cream machine and churn until frozen.
Speaker 2: What made you choose a vanilla ice cream?
Speaker 1: I have a memory of culinary school and went to
Speaker 1: culinary school in Paris at age It was twenty four
Speaker 1: to twenty five, and I did a sort of general
Speaker 1: culinary program, so I didn't focus on pastry, even though
Speaker 1: now I'm mostly a baker, but we had one day
Speaker 1: a week of pastry, and I was very influenced by
Speaker 1: our chef. Chef Antoine was our pastry chef in culinary school.
Speaker 1: And I remember the day that we made vanilla ice cream.
Speaker 1: We were doing all the custards and he, you know,
Speaker 1: he was late in his career. He had worked at
Speaker 1: lots of tiv Aut, like lots of three Michelin star
Speaker 1: restaurants in Paris, and we made vanilla ice cream and
Speaker 1: he took it out of the ice cream machine and
Speaker 1: he tasted it, and he just got this look on
Speaker 1: a total sort of like exalted look on his face,
Speaker 1: and he was just like, I love anell ice cream.
Speaker 1: It's the best thing there is. And so that was
Speaker 1: really formative, and he was right. It really is the
Speaker 1: most delicious dessert. I love dairy based desserts. I love
Speaker 1: dairy in general. Vanilla is one of the most unique,
Speaker 1: incredible flavors that comes from the earth. So I just
Speaker 1: think it's the most perfect dessert that there.
Speaker 2: Is, because I do too when I go to the
Speaker 2: River Cafe now, and I know every dessert I've made,
Speaker 2: every dessert, and I love, you know, I just love them,
Speaker 2: but they almost don't ask me anymore. They just bring
Speaker 2: ice cream, right, And I think, do you make your
Speaker 2: ice cream in the same way? Do you use the
Speaker 2: vanilla pods?
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean I like, I like this recipe because
Speaker 1: it has a lot of vanilla, which is great. But
Speaker 1: I do make ice cream at home. I got an
Speaker 1: ice cream maker last year, a good one. Finally a
Speaker 1: good one, so you have a good result. But I like,
Speaker 1: you know, I went to colony school in France, so
Speaker 1: I like the cramong glass base and lass egg yolks
Speaker 1: and make the most delicious ice cream.
Speaker 2: And so if we're going back, because I would love
Speaker 2: to talk to you more about coming, you know, to
Speaker 2: pastry and how you came there and going to France
Speaker 2: to learn to cook, because again there's a similarity there
Speaker 2: that my living in Paris, as I did as an
Speaker 2: adult working in an architect's office. It was there that
Speaker 2: I decided to become a cook, and I went to
Speaker 2: do you know, the Mastering in the Art of French cooking.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm so old that Simone Beck was living
Speaker 2: in Paris, and I somehow got in touch with her
Speaker 2: and asked her if I could have some time with her,
Speaker 2: and so I used to go to her apartment in
Speaker 2: the sixteenth Wow, this is about me, and I want
Speaker 2: to talk about you. So tell me. Tell me about
Speaker 2: growing up in your house, Tell me about your parents
Speaker 2: and food.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Saint Louis, Missouri, in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: I would say it was a very typical kind of
Speaker 1: suburban childhood of the nineteen nineties. But both of my
Speaker 1: parents cooked all the time. Mostly both did, yeah, mostly
Speaker 1: my mom who was home more. My dad worked more.
Speaker 2: What did he do?
Speaker 1: He was actually recently retired. He worked at Washington University
Speaker 1: Medical School, so he was an academic physician. And that's
Speaker 1: what brought my family to Saint Louis. They are not
Speaker 1: originally Midwesterners. My parents there from the East Coast, so
Speaker 1: they moved out to the Midwest, where my grandma was
Speaker 1: sure we'd never get a bagel. She was very worried.
Speaker 1: She came, my family came to No, she was just
Speaker 1: family was on the East coast and she was very
Speaker 1: scared that no one would get a bagel. Turns out
Speaker 1: we had a great bagel shop nearby. So and I
Speaker 1: have two older sisters. We were all born in Saint
Speaker 1: Louis and I just come from a house where cooking
Speaker 1: was very central and we all ate dinner together every
Speaker 1: night at the table. My mom made dinner almost every night,
Speaker 1: and I think as a child of the nineties, I
Speaker 1: learned later in life that that wasn't so typical. That
Speaker 1: it's like a lot of my friend's parents both worked,
Speaker 1: and my mom worked as well, but she was a teacher,
Speaker 1: so she had more time in the afternoons, so she'd
Speaker 1: come home and it wasn't uncommon for her to bake
Speaker 1: a loaf of bread in the afternoon, and so we'd
Speaker 1: have fresh bread for dinner, and she'd make lots of
Speaker 1: soups and everything homemade from scratch. So I grew up
Speaker 1: with that very normalized and very kind of typical. We
Speaker 1: started every meal with a green salad where she'd you know,
Speaker 1: cut up crunchy vegetables and mostly romaine, and she'd put
Speaker 1: all of oil and redwhe vinegar and some grated parmesan
Speaker 1: on the salad, and that was how we started our meal,
Speaker 1: and it was really ideal. I think that taught me
Speaker 1: from a young age about the importance of cooking, and
Speaker 1: I think my parents also modeled really healthy behavior around food,
Speaker 1: which I think again as a child in the nineties
Speaker 1: was not so common really. That was the era of
Speaker 1: like everything was low fat or no fat, with a
Speaker 1: lot of you know a lot of snack foods and
Speaker 1: prepared foods. So that wasn't really a thing in our house.
Speaker 1: I think I learned I gave me good habits as
Speaker 1: an adult because I'm not a snacker, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: like to eat a proper meal. So I'm really grateful
Speaker 1: for the modeling around food and cooking in our house.
Speaker 2: How do you think she did that that she would
Speaker 2: teach and then she would go shopping or do you
Speaker 2: think she'd wake up in the morning and think, I
Speaker 2: know what I'm going to cook today?
Speaker 1: Or did you I have di I really ask her.
Speaker 1: I mean she has still today a really extensive and
Speaker 1: well curated recipe box. She did me multiple boxes, really,
Speaker 1: But I think my mom really liked cooking, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't it was a chore for her, because you know,
Speaker 1: with family of five, I think it's always going to
Speaker 1: feel like a chore if you do it every night.
Speaker 1: But she also liked it, so I don't really know
Speaker 1: how she decided what she would make, But we would
Speaker 1: have dinners of she would have to me. Looking back,
Speaker 1: I think that they were really inspired meals. We'd have
Speaker 1: like french onion soup and crocs one night, and then
Speaker 1: we'd have what were other sort of typical meals that
Speaker 1: she would make. We would have like baked potatoes and
Speaker 1: steak and broccoli another night. So we had really well rounded,
Speaker 1: abundant meals.
Speaker 2: Would you ever go in the kitchen?
Speaker 1: I would help her. We all had chores, my sisters
Speaker 1: and I, So it was setting the table, clearing the table,
Speaker 1: not so much helping with the dishes. My dad is
Speaker 1: sort of a mania called dishwasher, and so we were
Speaker 1: not actually didn't want our help with that, And so
Speaker 1: I would bake with my mom more often. I was
Speaker 1: a really studious child, so I would be doing my
Speaker 1: homework when my mom was making dinner. But on the
Speaker 1: weekends we would, you know, I would help her baking
Speaker 1: breaking projects.
Speaker 2: Would you have dessert? Also? Every night you'd have screen salad,
Speaker 2: but go on to the dessert.
Speaker 1: We would have dessert every night.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was I mean it was small. It was like
Speaker 1: a little bit of ice cream after dinner on you know,
Speaker 1: everyone kind of doing we wouldn't like properly have it
Speaker 1: at the table, but it was everyone can kind of
Speaker 1: help himself, and there was no restriction or judgment around food,
Speaker 1: which is really important.
Speaker 2: And you said your father cooked as well, Yeah, my
Speaker 2: dad cooked.
Speaker 1: It was more of a weekend project. You'd make us
Speaker 1: breakfasts and we'd always have It was very common in
Speaker 1: my family to had like a Sunday brunch with bagels
Speaker 1: and scrambled eggs and fruit and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and he would cook. One of my earliest food memories
Speaker 1: is my dad sawteg sliced garlic and olive oil to
Speaker 1: make linguini with clams.
Speaker 2: So where did you live. Where was it you were
Speaker 2: near the No.
Speaker 1: We were in Saint Louis. We had like kind of
Speaker 1: so in those days. I think he would use canned clams.
Speaker 1: We had a pretty good fish market where a lot
Speaker 1: of the fish came up from the Gulf because we
Speaker 1: were in Saint Louis. So I grew up eating fish,
Speaker 1: but not like not like here in New York. But
Speaker 1: that memory, and especially the smell memory of the garlic
Speaker 1: and olive oil, I still to this day I think
Speaker 1: that there is no better smell in the entire world
Speaker 1: than garlic and olive oil.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you need that smell that you I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know there have been times that I just need
Speaker 2: to have that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very grounding to me just because of how
Speaker 1: early on I remember that. So in my family, we
Speaker 1: always joke that we discussed the next meal. At the
Speaker 1: current meal. I'll be sitting out for dinner, then we
Speaker 1: talk about what what are we gonna eat tomorrow?
Speaker 2: I think that might that might become more common, that
Speaker 2: there's something about because I remember saying that to my mother.
Speaker 2: She said, well, you know, what are we going to
Speaker 2: eat tomorrow? So you just was slightly groaning from a
Speaker 2: and but then it's it's fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 2: To get a bed thinking what are we going to
Speaker 2: eat tomorrow? What are we going to wake up to tomorrow?
Speaker 1: We loved a meal plan and yeah.
Speaker 2: And so your father more about your dad cooking, So
Speaker 2: you would do at the breakfast and he would do
Speaker 2: the weekends. Was it his family that came from Ukraine.
Speaker 1: It's very fuzzy, yes, and no Ukraine or Russia, we
Speaker 1: don't really know. It's been actually very difficult to find
Speaker 1: on my mom's side. My mother's grandparents came from Ukraine
Speaker 1: and only spoke Yiddish, and her grandfather before coming to
Speaker 1: the United States was a baker, which I didn't know
Speaker 1: this until I was an adult, like not even that
Speaker 1: many time. Yes, I was working on my first cookbook
Speaker 1: and I was with my mom because my mom and
Speaker 1: I cooked together all the time now, and she kind
Speaker 1: of offhandedly mentioned this. We were in the kitchen together
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, yeah, well, you know, my grandpa
Speaker 1: was a baker, and I had truly never heard that before.
Speaker 1: But it makes sense because we have a small but
Speaker 1: really important collection of family recipes from her side in
Speaker 1: the family of you know, sort of Jewish baking recipes,
Speaker 1: so apple cake and mondel bread and poppy seed bread,
Speaker 1: all these sort of like Eastern European Jewish and.
Speaker 2: They would have come from your grandmother who has got
Speaker 2: them from her.
Speaker 1: Yes, mother, Yes, So we have Aunt Tilly's apple cake,
Speaker 1: which is my grandmother sister was Tilly.
Speaker 2: I haven't Aunt Tilly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a famous, a famous apple cake recipe. Actually my
Speaker 1: mom submitted it to this is like in the nineties
Speaker 1: Saint Louis Post Dispatch, our local paper, and it won
Speaker 1: Recipe of the Year. So it's a famous apple cake. Famous.
Speaker 1: It has some it has orange juice in it, and
Speaker 1: it has sour cream, so it's like a very very
Speaker 1: tender cake and it just has mostly it has just
Speaker 1: a ton of apples in it, and it's delicious. I've
Speaker 1: made it in a very long time.
Speaker 2: Did your entertain They did.
Speaker 1: They entertained a lot, And it gave me a false
Speaker 1: sense of how easy entertaining is because my mom made
Speaker 1: it look so easy. She was so organized and would
Speaker 1: always have like be dressed and ready and flowers arranged
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes before people started showing up.
Speaker 2: Not like us, right right, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: But I grew up, Yeah, I grew up with those
Speaker 1: kinds of like parties. My dad's you know, fellow faculty
Speaker 1: from the hospital would come over for parties. And I
Speaker 1: grew up with that kind of as a kid from
Speaker 1: the top of the stairs looking down at the party
Speaker 1: and that the kind of little chit chat and you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of sound effects of a good party. I
Speaker 1: grew up with.
Speaker 2: And when you left this dream and you went off too,
Speaker 2: was the first time you left when you went to college?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: And did you what was the food like there? I know,
Speaker 2: the university, and I know Harvard, and I know so
Speaker 2: I don't you know, what would you be interesting to know?
Speaker 2: What was it like as in terms of food.
Speaker 1: It was at Harvard. It's most common for students to
Speaker 1: live on campus all four years, so it's not typicult
Speaker 1: to be in an apartment where you have may kitchen
Speaker 1: and can prepare your meals. So that's what I did.
Speaker 1: I lived in the dorms and we ate in the
Speaker 1: dining halls, which was sort of typical dining hall food.
Speaker 1: They I think right around the time I was a student,
Speaker 1: they had begun a program to work with local farms,
Speaker 1: but in Boston that just means you're eating winter squash
Speaker 1: for most of the year. We were just limited in
Speaker 1: our options, but I would go. I would Actually an
Speaker 1: interesting anecdote is that my parents moved to the Boston
Speaker 1: area when I started college. My dad's pitch shops, so
Speaker 1: my parents have been in Boston for the last eighteen
Speaker 1: plus years. But it meant that I had a home
Speaker 1: that I could go to if I wanted to cook.
Speaker 1: So I would go home on the weekends and bake.
Speaker 1: Sometimes i'd bake pies, and if I just really felt
Speaker 1: like I wanted to have that kind of domestic time
Speaker 1: from away from school and academics, and I would do that,
Speaker 1: so I was lucky that I also got to do that.
Speaker 2: Do you think the smell of baking was powerful as
Speaker 2: the smell of garlic and oil frying in the pan?
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: It is about smell biking, right.
Speaker 1: My mom. I know when I am so funny in
Speaker 1: my When I first started working up on Epite magazine,
Speaker 1: we worked in what was the former Gourmet Test kitchen
Speaker 1: where they really didn't have hoods, and I could I
Speaker 1: always knew when something was done because I could smell it.
Speaker 1: And then we moved facilities into a much bigger, newer
Speaker 1: kitchen where they had really powerful hoods and I couldn't
Speaker 1: smell anything, and it really kind of screwed me up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but baking is very evocative for me of my childhood.
Speaker 1: My mom, we had a outside of my sister's window,
Speaker 1: we had a sour cherry tree, which is very special.
Speaker 1: Sour Cherries are partly because of my childhood and partly
Speaker 1: just because they're incredible, always my favorite baking fruit, and
Speaker 1: they're so temporary, so fleeting.
Speaker 2: What is this season for us?
Speaker 1: Out? It's really early July. It was just about a
Speaker 1: week or two where you get window because they're very,
Speaker 1: very fragile. When they're ripe, they are so soft, and
Speaker 1: so they just they go bad so fast. So my
Speaker 1: mom would bake pies with Sara cherries, and we would
Speaker 1: pick the cherries out of my sister's window from her bedroom.
Speaker 1: My mom would be terrified, we're gonna fall out of
Speaker 1: the window. So before the birds could get them, we'd
Speaker 1: try to pick enough cherries.
Speaker 2: Would you preserve them? Would you put them into ours?
Speaker 2: We didn't.
Speaker 1: I wish we had done that. I would do that now.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things is is cherries and grappa,
Speaker 2: you know, really strong alcohol, and I don't like so
Speaker 2: much in syrup, but the French do it in a
Speaker 2: kind of de v and the and yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: love that.
Speaker 1: Yes, my mom would bake pies, just bake pies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the smell of pie baking is to me very
Speaker 1: reminiscent of my childhood.
Speaker 2: So you'd go home at the weekends and bake. And
Speaker 2: you were saying, as saying in the introduction that you
Speaker 2: were studying literature and history and the liberal arts education.
Speaker 2: But then you had a moment was there a moment
Speaker 2: that you sort of an epiphany when you said, actually,
Speaker 2: what I want to do is cook or was that
Speaker 2: a gradual thing to do it?
Speaker 1: It feels like it was both in a way. When
Speaker 1: I graduated from college, I didn't really know what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do. I moved back home for the summer,
Speaker 1: and I started cooking basically NonStop. It became the only
Speaker 1: thing that I really I wasn't really motivated to find
Speaker 1: a job, but I was highly motivated to cook dinner
Speaker 1: every night for my parents, me and my parents, and
Speaker 1: they kind of loved it, but they also wanted me
Speaker 1: to like figure some stuff out. So that's when actually
Speaker 1: I got an internship. I moved to New York. That's
Speaker 1: when I became even more serious about cooking and eating
Speaker 1: and exploring New York's restaurants to the extent that I
Speaker 1: could on being like living on a stipend from an internship.
Speaker 1: Then I applied to culinary school because which one was
Speaker 1: a fernde in Paris, which I only applied to one
Speaker 1: I was the only one I really knew that much
Speaker 1: about that had been recommended by, you know, a friend
Speaker 1: of a friend of a friend. So I pursued culinary
Speaker 1: school more as a means to moving to another country.
Speaker 1: I wanted to live abroad. I wanted to get that
Speaker 1: education and have that experience. I am. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a lover of Julia Child and I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be her basically. But I always had the plan to
Speaker 1: presume academics. So after I did that, I went back
Speaker 1: to school and I did a master's in It was
Speaker 1: a master's in history, but with their study a focus
Speaker 1: on culinary history, basically looking at the sort of intellectual
Speaker 1: history of food. And I loved doing that. But about
Speaker 1: halfway through my master's program, I just decided that I
Speaker 1: missed cooking. I missed that feeling of making something with
Speaker 1: my hands that had always been so important to me.
Speaker 1: So I finished my master's program and that's when I decided, like,
Speaker 1: I think that I have to be making food and
Speaker 1: not just reading and writing about it.
Speaker 2: And what did you think that having that academic knowledge,
Speaker 2: knowing the history, knowing influenced your actual cooking. Do you
Speaker 2: think you would have been with that all that a
Speaker 2: different kind of cook if you didn't know or have that.
Speaker 1: I think it just informs my perspective, my perspective is
Speaker 1: just very long, I think when it comes to cooking,
Speaker 1: because when I would read these like early modern cookbook texts,
Speaker 1: some of it would seem very contemporary.
Speaker 2: What year when when you say early modern, what.
Speaker 1: Year seventeen hundreds for the most part, Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: That I'm making in seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Oh so most of the books from that period were
Speaker 1: written by professional chefs, all men of course, who worked
Speaker 1: in big houses, big nobile houses or in you know,
Speaker 1: royal households, and they were in the same genre as
Speaker 1: household manual, So how to how to keep a house
Speaker 1: in France and England. Yeah, so this is really when
Speaker 1: the these are kind of proto cookbooks like these are
Speaker 1: sort of the first examples of cookbooks as we know them.
Speaker 1: And they would talk about how to throw a banquet,
Speaker 1: you know, make this kind of pie, you know, they
Speaker 1: would how to make these sort of sculptural pieces that
Speaker 1: would go sort of in between courses, and you know,
Speaker 1: very like heavily spiced food, sort of food that was
Speaker 1: not so unlike food of the Middle Ages. Really also
Speaker 1: where sweet and savory were not divided between. There really
Speaker 1: was no concept of courses. Everything would just be laid
Speaker 1: out together, so sweet and savory would be mingled. I
Speaker 1: loved I love reading these books. Yeah, and they were illustrations.
Speaker 1: It's like fascinating. But really just knowing having that knowledge
Speaker 1: makes me realize that, like when I am creating a recipe,
Speaker 1: I'm never really making anything new ever. You know, everything's
Speaker 1: already been made before, and I'm just maybe putting a
Speaker 1: little touch on it or something or changing the proportion.
Speaker 1: So it just gives me that perspective of like someone
Speaker 1: before me has already done this. You know. I'm not
Speaker 1: the kind of cook that is so motivated by the
Speaker 1: idea of originality, you know, because I just things are
Speaker 1: classic for a reason, you know, these combinations that are
Speaker 1: tried and true, It's because they taste the best, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm never really trying to innovate so much. I
Speaker 1: just want to make the best version of the thing
Speaker 1: that I want to eat, you know. So you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm recipe developing, I try to be very honest
Speaker 1: and up front of it.
Speaker 2: I noticed that with your food. I noticed that it's
Speaker 2: classic and it's I said, rigorous, you know, And I
Speaker 2: think we can all find those ideas recipes, you know,
Speaker 2: let's do this, or let's do that. But what we're
Speaker 2: interested in is how to how to make the perfect
Speaker 2: I don't know, tartantan, how do you make I'd like
Speaker 2: to learn how to make a kind of chocolate moss
Speaker 2: that actually has that depth of flavor and not by
Speaker 2: putting something in it that we've never seen or making
Speaker 2: it higher. Which is not to say try it, you know,
Speaker 2: try the experimentation. But yeah, that's what we do. That's
Speaker 2: what I like about your food, and I like about
Speaker 2: the recipes that you cook. The River Cafe is excited.
Speaker 2: We're opening the River Cafe Cafe. Come for a morning
Speaker 2: Briotian cappuccino, a plate of seasonal antiposity on the terrace,
Speaker 2: or an ice cream or a paratubo in the sun.
Speaker 2: We can't wait to open and we cannot wait to
Speaker 2: welcome you. So you're becoming a chef in New York
Speaker 2: right doing with Bone Appetite. And then how did you
Speaker 2: seg by into doing it on your own and working
Speaker 2: by yourself?
Speaker 1: So I started working at Bone Epetee in the test
Speaker 1: kitchen almost right out of grad school. I got so
Speaker 1: lucky to have gotten that job when I did, and
Speaker 1: I was thrilled. I could not have been happier. I
Speaker 1: get to move back to New York, which I really
Speaker 1: wanted to do, and I just thought that food media
Speaker 1: was truly like the perfect place for me because I
Speaker 1: got to make food and I got to write about it,
Speaker 1: and that it really was. I started as a recipe tester,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't developing recipes, but the food editors would develop.
Speaker 1: They would go through a series of tastings and then
Speaker 1: write the recipe and then I would get it and
Speaker 1: I was sort of the last person to touch that
Speaker 1: recipe in the kitchen before it would get published. So
Speaker 1: it was my job to flag anything that didn't work.
Speaker 1: And I learned so much about recipe writing and development
Speaker 1: during that time. I think it's so essential to learn
Speaker 1: how to test a recipe if you want to do development.
Speaker 1: And then I got promoted and I became, you know,
Speaker 1: went through all the different levels in the magazine world
Speaker 1: of like associate editor, you know, assistant editor, associate. I
Speaker 1: think I was senior associate, and then senior finally, so
Speaker 1: I was there for five years and developing recipes the
Speaker 1: whole time, and I just got to the point in
Speaker 1: the magazine cycle of like, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: can do another Christmas issue. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: could do another Thanksgiving issue, summer grilling. It's very repetitive.
Speaker 1: So I just sort of thought after five cycles of
Speaker 1: doing that that it was time to move on. But
Speaker 1: I had also begun to do video as part of,
Speaker 1: you know, my job in the test kitchen. I worked
Speaker 1: for bon Epte, which was part of Conde Nast, and
Speaker 1: they had this big, beautiful new space at the World
Speaker 1: Trade Center and they had, you know, a video team.
Speaker 1: So I started doing some video hosting app on epetit
Speaker 1: with you know, basically like no training in that I
Speaker 1: hadn't had any experience in front of the camera. I
Speaker 1: didn't really want to do that as part of my career.
Speaker 1: It just happened, so and it was extremely successful. And
Speaker 1: I did this show called Gourmey Makes where I like
Speaker 1: reverse engineered I basically knew that I liked to bake,
Speaker 1: and they were like, well, we can have Claire. We
Speaker 1: could hire a pastry chef, you know, from a restaurant
Speaker 1: in New York to come in and do this, or
Speaker 1: we could just have Claire do it and she's already
Speaker 1: on staff and we already pay her. So I started
Speaker 1: doing that show. She was really successful, but I just
Speaker 1: was like, I think I've been doing this long enough.
Speaker 1: I want to kind of do my own thing.
Speaker 2: So did you like the desserts that you were being
Speaker 2: given to before?
Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned earlier that like I didn't really
Speaker 1: grow up with a lot of store bought food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was sort of you know, like the first
Speaker 1: thing they had me make was a Twinkie. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I'd ever eaten it before.
Speaker 2: It's not to describe a tweaky the audience, the American
Speaker 2: audience when the Twinkie is a kind of roll with cream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a bar shaped cake individually wrapped with
Speaker 1: a cream filling. But it's not cream c R E
Speaker 1: A M. It's c R E M E, which is
Speaker 1: they can't actually call it cream filling because it has
Speaker 1: the area.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, you know, a lot of the things that I
Speaker 1: was trying to recreate were not in and of themselves
Speaker 1: really food. They were like things that are edible but
Speaker 1: are really not food because it's all packaged stuff. So
Speaker 1: that was really my job was like I'm going to
Speaker 1: make this into you know, actual food that someone could
Speaker 1: make and that you could eat. So I learned a
Speaker 1: lot doing it. I don't think that like in and
Speaker 1: of itself, the task of making a I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of other swinging. I made Twizzler the other you know,
Speaker 1: it was like so useful, But I learned a lot,
Speaker 1: and I think it helped me become a better recipe
Speaker 1: developer and also just to understand more of the problems
Speaker 1: solving process. So I left in twenty eighteen, so I
Speaker 1: was no longer on staff, and that's when I started
Speaker 1: writing my first cookbook, which is Desert Person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us about Dessert Person.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Dessert Person is a book of all the stuff
Speaker 1: that I like to bake and eat. It's not all sweet.
Speaker 1: There's some savory baking because baking. Part of the thesis
Speaker 1: of the book is that baking can be many different things,
Speaker 1: and it can be dinner, and it can you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just sweets. But really it's a book about
Speaker 1: kind of not restricting your sing oneself and not sort
Speaker 1: of assigning morality to food and not saying that some
Speaker 1: food is good or bad or thinking that you know
Speaker 1: you're doing something wrong by eating dessert. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just not how I think about it, and so that's
Speaker 1: kind of what that's kind of the underpinnings of the book.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like, it's okay to eat dessert, and
Speaker 1: we should celebrate it, and you know, food is one
Speaker 1: of life's great pleasures, if not a great pleasure, so
Speaker 1: you might as well enjoy it. I still look upon
Speaker 1: it so fondly and with a lot of pride, because
Speaker 1: it was a book that really felt at the time
Speaker 1: like the culmination of everything I had learned about pastry
Speaker 1: and cooking, but also about eating and about the kinds
Speaker 1: of foods that I like to eat, and about my
Speaker 1: style of baking. And so it's very you know, fresh
Speaker 1: produce driven, it's very seasonal. There's fruit deserts are kind
Speaker 1: of my favorite kinds of dessert, so there's tons of
Speaker 1: fruit in it.
Speaker 2: Tell us about food deserts. If somebody's listening to this
Speaker 2: and you want to tell them about which they should
Speaker 2: be thinking about when they think about fruit desserts. What
Speaker 2: is this month? Now? This is April, yes, So what
Speaker 2: are we thinking about right now?
Speaker 1: Oh? Right now, I'm just waiting until we get strawberries,
Speaker 1: which in New York will still be, you know, at
Speaker 1: least a month. So I have a kind of a
Speaker 1: hierarchy of fruit desserts. Okay, I think the top fruit
Speaker 1: dessert is as I mentioned, sour cherry. I think there
Speaker 1: is like no better baking fruit. And then after that apples.
Speaker 1: Apples are just an incredible specific Actually my favorite apple.
Speaker 1: And you know, I live in New York, which is
Speaker 1: truly like the land of apples. There's like hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of varieties. My favorite is called gold rush. Have
Speaker 1: you ever had a gold rush apple? They are It
Speaker 1: is the firmest apple I've ever tried, to the point
Speaker 1: where if you want to eat one out of hand,
Speaker 1: it almost hurts your mouth to bite into. But the
Speaker 1: flavor is incredible, like honey and lemon and even almost
Speaker 1: like tropical fruit. It's so complex and is so amazing
Speaker 1: for its sweet tart balance, and they hold together incredibly
Speaker 1: well when you bake them.
Speaker 2: So if you were making a tartai tan back to
Speaker 2: the tarta tent, would you use that for gold rush?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Because it is challenging. I think when you when you
Speaker 2: make it, let's talk about.
Speaker 1: I love I love making it and I love eating it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what is your and so you have these
Speaker 2: star with the apple. Can you tell me about your tartata?
Speaker 1: Yes, I've made it so many different ways. So the
Speaker 1: kind of classic way is just to make your caramel
Speaker 1: and your skillet and then add your apples and cook them.
Speaker 1: And there's all these tricks of like you can dry
Speaker 1: out your apples in advance by peeling them and cutting
Speaker 1: them and keeping them in the fridge.
Speaker 2: Do you cut the apples in half? Of do you
Speaker 2: cut them in pieces?
Speaker 1: I sort of cut them in lobes, like I cut
Speaker 1: around the core, so I end up with pieces that
Speaker 1: are slightly different sizes, which can be useful for tucking
Speaker 1: them into the gaps because there is a lot of
Speaker 1: they lose moisture and with a shrink shrink, So I
Speaker 1: like to actually pre cook my apples. I think it
Speaker 1: just takes out some of the variability. So I like
Speaker 1: to cook. I actually roast my apples in caramel before
Speaker 1: I assemble the whole thing, because what doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: about tartata is putting cold pastry on warm apples, and
Speaker 1: I like to avoid doing that because it just feels
Speaker 1: so wrong. So I like to I roast my apple
Speaker 1: in caramel covered really tightly in a low oven until
Speaker 1: they're soft, and then they cool in the caramel and
Speaker 1: they kind of absorb. Like the best thing about tart
Speaker 1: tatan is the way the apple's candy in the caramel
Speaker 1: and you cut into them, but apples have absorbed the
Speaker 1: caramel all the way through. It's not just like they
Speaker 1: have a ring of it around, and then the flesh
Speaker 1: is white on the inside, so this really facilitates that.
Speaker 1: And then I just lay the apples there. You know,
Speaker 1: there's already they're already sort of imbued with that caramel.
Speaker 1: I lay them in, put the pastry on top. Everything's cold,
Speaker 1: which is great, and then into the oven. It was
Speaker 1: more work. It's not that kind of spontaneous like cooking
Speaker 1: on the stove and throwing the whole thing in the oven.
Speaker 2: But I came from Paris. That was always the dessert
Speaker 2: that I wanted to perfect. And we had a tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny kitchen was so tiny that you couldn't actually put
Speaker 2: an oven in there, so we made a window and
Speaker 2: stuck back that looked like an air conditioner from the road,
Speaker 2: but it was the oven. And I actually it's interesting
Speaker 2: to hear you say that, because that's how I did
Speaker 2: the dark dead to him because what you will, they
Speaker 2: do shrink and they do. The whole point is to
Speaker 2: have the caramel and to have them dark brown, and
Speaker 2: to have them really strong. And I think that's how
Speaker 2: I ended up making them in two stages.
Speaker 1: That texture of like a soft but not mushy apple
Speaker 1: that's sort of caramelized all the way through and that's
Speaker 1: spooning into it is just one of the most satisfying
Speaker 1: food textures for me.
Speaker 2: There are so many books out there, cookbooks and dessert books,
Speaker 2: and this book was a huge success, wasn't it. What
Speaker 2: do you think that was due to? Why do you
Speaker 2: think your book reached so many people?
Speaker 1: I do think a lot of it was the timing.
Speaker 1: It came out in the fall of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Oh was it.
Speaker 1: Not a great time all around, but a great time
Speaker 1: for a cookbook, for a baking book. People were making
Speaker 1: banana bread.
Speaker 2: Like crazy in England as well. I have more text
Speaker 2: messages which include a loaf of bread than practically anything
Speaker 2: right else? Right?
Speaker 1: How do I make the sweeple text? How do I
Speaker 1: make it right?
Speaker 2: I would zoom cool? And you know, FaceTime cooking with
Speaker 2: friends of mine's children or trying to get I tried
Speaker 2: to get perfect. Do you have a perfect chocolate chip cookie?
Speaker 1: I do, and it's a dessert person. Yeah, it's so good.
Speaker 2: Good? Is it a thin one?
Speaker 1: It's a thin with like the very outer edges crispy
Speaker 1: and the rest of it is chewy, and it gets
Speaker 1: it kind of wrinkled because it's a thinner cookie has
Speaker 1: a higher proportion of butter, so it gets it kind
Speaker 1: of wrinkled edge, which I love. And it has both
Speaker 1: dark chocolate and milk chocolate in it. You just break
Speaker 1: it up, yes, yeah, so chopped up from a bar
Speaker 1: and a brown the butter which oh, that combination of
Speaker 1: the brown butter plus brown sugar plus vanilla, it gives
Speaker 1: you so much of that intense butter scotch flavor, which
Speaker 1: I love.
Speaker 2: Do you think that this book in your books and
Speaker 2: your influence? How much does that coincide with being visual online,
Speaker 2: being on YouTube, being Instagram? What do you feel about
Speaker 2: the New Revolution and food?
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to say that I am in
Speaker 1: favor of it because I'm a part of it, but
Speaker 1: I have my I have my mixed feelings. I think overall,
Speaker 1: I think there's it's so easy to be to feel overexposed,
Speaker 1: and to just think that you can turn your normal
Speaker 1: daily activities into content and to sort of always be visible,
Speaker 1: which I don't like, don't I don't actually post on
Speaker 1: Instagram that frequently, and I'm told that I need to
Speaker 1: do it more. But you know, I like to keep
Speaker 1: very private actually, and I like to keep my private
Speaker 1: life private. But I try to remain rooted in the
Speaker 1: idea that visual medium for food is the best. It's
Speaker 1: so much easier to teach someone how to make something
Speaker 1: when you can think to write the words on a page.
Speaker 1: So that's where I come from. I come from a
Speaker 1: place of teaching when it comes to YouTube and you know,
Speaker 1: just video and social media in general. I hope that
Speaker 1: we still need cookbooks. I think that cookbooks are important
Speaker 1: from like it's not really about individual recipes. It's about like,
Speaker 1: what is this a book really saying? What is it?
Speaker 1: Sort of like what's the lifestyle? It's it's advocating for
Speaker 1: what is the kind of approach to food that is
Speaker 1: taken as a whole. When you look at the entire book,
Speaker 1: it's not just you know, one hundred recipes put together
Speaker 1: in a specific order. It's really much more than that.
Speaker 1: It's about a sort of whole, the way this person
Speaker 1: is conceiving of, you know, the work, the work that
Speaker 1: they're doing, and the work of home cooking. So I
Speaker 1: do think we still need cookbooks. I wonder for myself
Speaker 1: if I am going to keep writing them, because it's like,
Speaker 1: once you said everything there is to say, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I always say that I think that you know, often
Speaker 2: thing we've done thirteen or fourteen, I can't remember, but
Speaker 2: I think that I alwa often say does a world
Speaker 2: need another cookbook? Yeah? And I do keep doing them
Speaker 2: because I just love doing them. For me to actually
Speaker 2: work with, it's so collaborative. We work in a very
Speaker 2: collaborative way. So we immediately start working with the photographers,
Speaker 2: with the designers. We sit around the table and we
Speaker 2: always cook something and then we taste it and then
Speaker 2: we say, let's do it this way, let's change the recipe.
Speaker 2: And so for us, I think it's one of the
Speaker 2: joys of life. It's about informing and it's always aspirational.
Speaker 2: I think that people I think they once did a
Speaker 2: study of Gourmet magazine, which you mentioned and I grew
Speaker 2: up with, and I think maybe. Nora Efron wrote an
Speaker 2: essay saying, have you ever cooked a recipe from Gourmet?
Speaker 2: And it was kind of true that you'd buy the
Speaker 2: magazine and you'd say, I'm going to make that, I'm
Speaker 2: going to be a better person, I'm going to do this,
Speaker 2: and then put the magazine down, and you know didn't.
Speaker 1: So right, That's how I tend to read cookbooks, and
Speaker 1: I'm not ever I'm basically never making recipes out of cookbooks.
Speaker 1: I mean, I shouldn't say maybe literally never am I
Speaker 1: making recipes out of cookbooks? But I read them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's exactly why, because I want to sort of
Speaker 1: see I love the photography, and I want to see
Speaker 1: the types of recipes, and I love the other sort
Speaker 1: of ancillary writing. Sometimes there's essays, so like Martha, the
Speaker 1: same thing with Martha Stewart, who's her one hundred book
Speaker 1: is coming out, which is blows my mind, but I
Speaker 1: think one hundred yeah, so yeah, like I'm that's why
Speaker 1: I'm buying and reading cookbooks, not so much because I
Speaker 1: think it's going to help me, you know, make dinner
Speaker 1: on a Tuesday. I can already make dinner on a man.
Speaker 2: If you like listening to Ruthie's table for Would you
Speaker 2: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Thank you.
Speaker 1: We went to London a few months ago and we
Speaker 1: had lunch at the River Cafe and then we took
Speaker 1: the train to Paris and we're in Paris for a while.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't been back to Paris since I lived
Speaker 1: there for Connory School had been over ten years. So
Speaker 1: it was a very emotional trip for me and I
Speaker 1: had the best time, and I want my husband. We'd
Speaker 1: never been to Europe together.
Speaker 2: Who is a chef?
Speaker 1: So it's a chef, yes, what is he doing? Before
Speaker 1: we met, he had been a chef in New York
Speaker 1: restaurants for ten years at a couple of places that
Speaker 1: are now closed. Then he really left kitchens for a
Speaker 1: long time and went into sort of restaurant operations. And
Speaker 1: so he has a restaurant that he runs in Chelsea Market.
Speaker 1: It's Burgers and Sheiks, and they partner with this incredible
Speaker 1: dairy farm in the Hudson Valley called Ronnie Brook. Maybe
Speaker 1: Ronnie Brook Dairy, Yeah, just like a big New York dairy.
Speaker 1: Actually they're not big, but in New York they're just
Speaker 1: very sort of an iconic like New York Dairy brand.
Speaker 1: And now he's actually returned to kitchens and he's cooking
Speaker 1: at a place in the Catskills. It's called the Tasting
Speaker 1: Room at Catskill Distillery. So he's partnering with this woman
Speaker 1: named Claire Marin and she has this distillery up in
Speaker 1: Calicoon and she makes honey and maple syrup, and so
Speaker 1: he's cooking at the restaurant.
Speaker 2: There. There's a real emergence or emergence of local produce,
Speaker 2: isn't it People going back to the fairy, to the
Speaker 2: farms to know, especially in the Hudson River Valley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're surrounded by farms everywhere we look.
Speaker 2: And what are you working on now?
Speaker 1: Right now? I've really begun pretty serious, dedicated work on
Speaker 1: my next book, which is savory, mostly savory. The sort
Speaker 1: of central thesis of this book is that if you
Speaker 1: want to live the best life, you have to cook.
Speaker 1: So it's really kind of a meditation on how to
Speaker 1: live well by cooking for oneself and for you know,
Speaker 1: your friends and family. So it's pretty it's pretty expansive
Speaker 1: and comprehensive. It's sort of it's like kind of meals
Speaker 1: for every occasion, from breakfast to a snack to entertaining
Speaker 1: to holidays. So it's really it's actually very driven by
Speaker 1: eating rather than cooking, because I always make a distinction
Speaker 1: between there's the things that you love to cook and
Speaker 1: the things that you love to eat.
Speaker 2: That distinction.
Speaker 1: For instance, I love cooking. I mean I love French food.
Speaker 1: So it's like I love cooking kind of multi step
Speaker 1: French recipes like I love cassoulet. I love cooking it.
Speaker 1: I don't totally love eating it. It's a lot very heavy,
Speaker 1: just very like nutrient dense, you know, it's beans and
Speaker 1: lots of different meats. But I love cooking it. So
Speaker 1: it's like I love making it for an occasion.
Speaker 2: What do you love about cooking?
Speaker 1: I love slowness, the slowness. I love simmering beans. The
Speaker 1: beans themselves are so delicious that tar bay beans, which
Speaker 1: I always make a point to get. I love the process,
Speaker 1: the kind of layering of the flavors and the long cooking,
Speaker 1: and I love assembling that kind of when you get
Speaker 1: to like layer the beans with all the different you know,
Speaker 1: the garlic sausage and the dot confie and all that,
Speaker 1: but not my favorite thing to eat. So this new
Speaker 1: book is really driven by the things that I'd love
Speaker 1: to eat most.
Speaker 2: So give me five.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, okay too well, so it's funny. The
Speaker 1: book is savory, but of course there's lots of dessert.
Speaker 1: There has to be, because that's it's proportionate to the
Speaker 1: amount of dessert that I eat in my life compared
Speaker 1: to savory food, which is maybe like five, you know,
Speaker 1: one to five or something. I just made like a
Speaker 1: very simple pistachio cake, super simple, and make it in
Speaker 1: the food processor, because you start just by grinding toasted
Speaker 1: pistachios and then you just add all your.
Speaker 2: Other ingredients in pour butter, sugar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically eggs, very egg heavy.
Speaker 2: Do you do it in love?
Speaker 1: I did it just as a single layer so that
Speaker 1: you can get I just sprinkled some confection of sugar
Speaker 1: and toasted pistachios over top. Not too sweet, you know,
Speaker 1: all my desserts are really not too sweet, so you
Speaker 1: can taste it's supposed to taste like something else with sugar.
Speaker 1: What else? Lots of salads? I mean, I'm a vegetable lover.
Speaker 1: I haven't talked about that yet, but I know I haven't.
Speaker 1: I love vegetables like I love like a soft cooked
Speaker 1: green beani, just really simple, like you know, one of
Speaker 1: the ingredients that I use most in the kitchen is
Speaker 1: rock garlic, because I think that heat is so important
Speaker 1: and nothing else is really like it. So the other
Speaker 1: day I was just I made some sort of soft
Speaker 1: cooked green beans, but just olive oil and lemon and
Speaker 1: a lot of rock garlic, a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: flaky salt.
Speaker 2: And better, aren't I think the other difference between Italian
Speaker 2: food and French food is that Italians don't understand the
Speaker 2: word identic except for pasta, and all their vegetables are
Speaker 2: really cooked. You know. I don't know why, and i'd
Speaker 2: be careful because so British. But when the British overcooked vegetables,
Speaker 2: you can't eat them. And when the Italians overcome vegetables,
Speaker 2: they are really delicious. I think it is the olive oil.
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, it's a very and also
Speaker 2: the ingredient, but it is. You know, my mother in law,
Speaker 2: who's at time, never had anything crispy and a vegetable
Speaker 2: undercooked broccoli or undercooked green beans. Yeah, it's very whereas
Speaker 2: the French do have you know, just blatched green beans right,
Speaker 2: which you're delicious too, But I do like would you
Speaker 2: call soft?
Speaker 1: I don't want them to be so cooked that they
Speaker 1: lose their color and vibrancy and that the freshness of flavor.
Speaker 1: But I don't want it to have some of the
Speaker 1: I want all the rawness gone. So it's that kind
Speaker 1: of special like window of cooking. I just I mean,
Speaker 1: all the food I love is simple.
Speaker 2: It's like I.
Speaker 1: Just want like them.
Speaker 2: And this book will be at one twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I have a while, but I really need
Speaker 1: to work on it.
Speaker 2: Better go home and work. Before you do, go home
Speaker 2: and work, I'd like to ask you one question I
Speaker 2: ask everyone. Food is sharing? Food? Is what your mother
Speaker 2: did to get her children around the table, to have
Speaker 2: her children around the table too. I'd love to meet
Speaker 2: your mother because it sounds like she created this home
Speaker 2: and comfort for you all, And so I would ask you, Claire, well,
Speaker 2: if you had a comfort food, the food that you
Speaker 2: went to for comfort, what would that be?
Speaker 1: When I think of comfort food, I think of potatoes.
Speaker 1: You know something I eat from such a young age
Speaker 1: and is truly still one of my favorite things to eat.
Speaker 1: And you can make a potato a million different ways,
Speaker 1: but to me, just like a buttered a buttered potato,
Speaker 1: which is something that we ate when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: like a steamed or boiled potato with some salt and
Speaker 1: pepper and butter on. It is still something that like,
Speaker 1: I would eat it every day. It's so delicious and
Speaker 1: the kind of heat and steam from the inside, and
Speaker 1: the starchiness and the kind of you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of blank slate that potatoes are, and then just like
Speaker 1: a little bit of a little bit of butter, last seasoning. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom would make like parsley potatoes, which yeah, just
Speaker 1: just butter and parsley and salt, pepper, and to this
Speaker 1: day is such a comforting food for me. I love
Speaker 1: it well.
Speaker 2: I look forward to seeing the recipes for potatoes in
Speaker 2: your book and to seeing more of you. And thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming.
Speaker 1: This was such a pleasure. Thank you so much, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair