Culture Study Podcast - Cooking in the Age of Infinite Recipes

00:00:00.820 Hey everyone, it's Anne. We're making today's full episode free for everyone. There are

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00:00:19.200 it so I can split everything that we make straight down the middle with Melody, which

00:00:23.500 is how much her work is worth. It also makes it so that we can do whatever we want. We

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00:00:45.740 independent media, go to culturestudypod.substack.com. Thank you so much. Okay, on with the show.

00:00:52.620 A lot of times I cook recipes because we're on the podcast, we're interviewing somebody

00:00:58.160 And so I will go through a cookbook and find something that's unique to me.

00:01:03.460 So one of the most recent recipes I cooked was a kefta wrapped in grape leaves from Fadi Catan's new cookbook called Bethlehem, which is a Palestinian cookbook, because the recipe was something that reminded me of something my grandmother cooked.

00:01:20.840 What else?

00:01:21.800 Oh, my boyfriend and I really wanted to make shrimp.

00:01:24.300 So we bought some shrimp, and then we remembered an old Alice in Roman recipe, shrimp with too much butter.

00:01:31.520 So we just did that.

00:01:33.140 So based on memory, a lot of times, like, oh, yeah, didn't we do this thing one time?

00:01:37.280 So that was another.

00:01:38.960 And then what else?

00:01:41.060 Oh, my late Auntie Julie has a tabbouleh recipe, a very smelly, delicious recipe for kind of an Armenian bulgur-based tabbouleh.

00:01:52.460 So I made a cookbook 10 years ago that's a very kind of primitive cookbook,

00:01:57.740 but I pulled that open to find her recipe.

00:02:05.460 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:02:08.960 And I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and I host the Life and Art Podcast from the Financial Times.

00:02:14.840 And I write a lot about how cultural identity is passed down through food and preserved through recipes.

00:02:21.740 Do you cook a lot in the summer?

00:02:24.040 I assemble a lot in the summer.

00:02:26.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:02:26.800 What about you?

00:02:27.920 I try to do cold.

00:02:29.600 Well, and the worst thing is that, so I live on an island, as other listeners to this podcast

00:02:35.080 know, like I can't, it's sometimes hard to get heavier things if you're walking on the

00:02:40.780 ferry instead of driving on.

00:02:42.480 And so I haven't replaced the propane in my grill.

00:02:46.020 Right.

00:02:46.700 So the grill is not in fun, like how have I gotten this far into summer?

00:02:51.100 and i haven't grilled at all yeah but i do a lot like and i you know in the evenings i like to

00:02:58.280 spend more time in my garden so i think i like i just spend less time thinking about cooking or

00:03:03.900 like you know i love in the winter cooking like a huge pot of soup or stew and having that like

00:03:09.700 on the pot all day and now i'm like i'll just have like a giant salad like a salad the size of a bed

00:03:17.080 you know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah, totally. I'm waiting for, for the, I just keep trying with

00:03:23.480 the tomatoes. Yes. But you know, that doesn't happen till it happens. But you're right. It's

00:03:28.720 like in the summer, you want to cook something really fast, or you want to assemble something

00:03:32.660 cold. So we're going to talk a lot more about like your, you assembling recipes, the cookbook

00:03:40.260 that you fashioned, all that sort of thing. But I'd love to know how you learned to cook.

00:03:45.360 Like what are your first memories about it?

00:03:48.280 I learned to cook, I think, from sitting in the kitchen with my mother who would make – she would sort of quickly assemble things that her mother would make.

00:03:58.160 And so I sort of had memories of my grandmother's cooking that then I would kind of watch my mother make and she would say like, all right, you do some of it just to get me – just to get it into my hands.

00:04:08.920 So, for example, one thing that she cooks a lot is like an act of kind of love is this thing called cheese bedeg, which is also known as tidopita in Greek culture.

00:04:19.780 It's like phyllo dough and butter and phyllo dough and butter, like 20 layers and then a bunch of cheese in the middle and then phyllo dough and butter on the top.

00:04:27.020 And it's like when it bakes, it's like warm.

00:04:29.200 It's like all cheese and butter.

00:04:31.560 But it's a very kind of a ritual act.

00:04:33.980 And so making it was like, that's a really early memory of cooking is making that sort

00:04:39.000 of thing.

00:04:39.680 I learned, my mom came up with all sorts of like creative things to entertain my brother

00:04:47.100 and I and like as kind of after school enrichment when I was younger and she did this thing

00:04:53.680 for me and like four or five of my friends when we were in elementary school called kids

00:04:58.840 cuisine and it was named after there were like these little tv dinners called kids cuisine which

00:05:05.800 were in hindsight absolutely disgusting but like my most coveted thing in the whole world and so

00:05:11.260 I think she was kind of playing with that idea and what it was is my friends would come over to

00:05:15.160 my house and we'd learn how to cook something oh my mom would teach us how to cook something

00:05:19.380 and some of it you know I can't remember the exact recipes but I do know that we

00:05:23.520 like learned how to separate eggs for example like some of it was basic skill stuff and I

00:05:30.580 learned I think I learned how to cook bake cookies pretty early yeah and that's a great skill as a

00:05:37.320 kid that you can be like oh I want cookies I'm gonna bake them right and and really started

00:05:45.060 experimenting with different like small variations on the cookies and eventually came up with what I

00:05:51.220 think of as my secret recipe which again we'll talk about secret recipes as we go through this

00:05:56.040 episode like to the extent that they were known as like Annie's cookies in my town yeah that's

00:06:02.900 amazing I mean it's also special because usually the thing that someone has a name for that person

00:06:07.580 is like um 85 years old I know right and then I also have many memories of my grandmother who's

00:06:16.200 Norwegian cooking various Norwegian dishes and all of these Norwegian dishes this is something

00:06:21.020 and I've really come to understand only with time are very much Norwegian-American dishes

00:06:25.660 because the Norwegians who came here were all poor.

00:06:29.400 And so the food that they made was peasant food and cheaply assembled, not very many

00:06:36.540 ingredients, very, very straightforward, which is why when I went to Norway, I was like,

00:06:41.320 wait, where's all the stuff that my grandma would make it?

00:06:44.860 Because it's just very different types of food.

00:06:47.440 It is different.

00:06:48.020 It's one of the things that I find most interesting about all of this is that, like, culture lives on kind of reliably through food, right?

00:06:56.380 Like, especially if someone's displaced or they immigrate somewhere else, like, the language falls away after a generation.

00:07:03.240 Sometimes some superstitions remain, but, like, the religion matters less to our generation, too.

00:07:08.200 But then food, it's, like, sneaky.

00:07:09.980 Like, food you can pass down easily.

00:07:12.160 It makes you feel nostalgic for the person that brought it here.

00:07:15.320 And then that food, obviously, as you were saying with your grandmother, like it just changes based on where it lands.

00:07:21.880 Yeah.

00:07:22.640 Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:24.080 And that as a kid, you don't really understand any of that except for this is what my grandmother makes.

00:07:28.700 Right.

00:07:29.340 And oftentimes it's different than what other grandmothers make.

00:07:32.540 Yes.

00:07:32.920 So it's special in some capacity.

00:07:34.960 Yes.

00:07:35.560 It really does occur to you as you get older.

00:07:37.820 so I've been trying to figure out how to do an episode about food and recipes since Melody and

00:07:44.700 I first came up with the idea for this podcast and like we just had this line in our kind of our

00:07:49.300 ideas area that just said like food blogs yeah but we couldn't nail it down and then you and I

00:07:56.820 were talking about you know we wanted to have you on the show and like what are some ideas what do

00:08:01.020 want to talk about. And you wrote this beautiful email about all of the ways that you relate to

00:08:09.480 food and think about food and food as legacy and like recipe culture. And there were just so many

00:08:15.260 directions that we could take it. So that helped us. And then we knew too, that our listeners would

00:08:19.820 help us nail it down. Yeah. So questions are amazing. One of the things that we talked about

00:08:26.080 in our emails is that there's too much choice. So can you talk a little bit about that?

00:08:31.020 Sure. Yes. I've been thinking about this, that the sort of nature of online cooking and recipes has gotten to the point that it's like unsustainable. It feels like very unruly.

00:08:42.460 Yes.

00:08:43.020 I obviously have a personal interest, so I have a lot of cookbooks. I have maybe, I don't know, 50 cookbooks. I maybe buy like a new one every month or so.

00:08:50.720 And I'm realizing that increasingly I'm reading them like in bed, like novels, more than I'm reading them like actual cookbooks to cook from, although I cook from them sometimes.

00:08:59.780 But then I have, you know, like everybody, the New York Times cooking app, and they're putting out, you know, I think about 100 recipes a month now.

00:09:08.080 It's wild.

00:09:08.540 Which is an unbelievable number.

00:09:10.380 They could just recycle from the back end.

00:09:12.280 You know, they could just kind of pull them back up from the past.

00:09:13.680 I would appreciate that.

00:09:14.960 I know, I would too.

00:09:16.020 It's just stressing me out.

00:09:17.840 Obviously, the FT puts out recipes, which I also want to try.

00:09:20.900 I get a few sub stacks, Tamar Adler's sub stack, Hedy McKinnon, some chefs that I really like.

00:09:27.080 So sometimes I think, you know, I use them. And then in a pinch, I find myself Googling things. And then there's like an endless slog of recipes. And I don't know, I know I barely use a lot of them. I like save them and I save them on Instagram and on TikTok and everywhere. And they're very disorganized. And I feel like we haven't really figured out what we're doing here and which ones we actually care about and why we're saving them. And it just feels compulsive.

00:09:55.380 right and I also fear for the future of these recipes because like with all digital culture

00:10:04.480 like there's just no assurance that they will live on in the place that they previously lived

00:10:08.940 right true so what about like big food feelings this is like this is such a huge question but

00:10:15.740 like why do you think that food and recipes and cooking give people like that why are there so

00:10:23.320 many opinions oh that's a great question i think that like food is one of the most emotional

00:10:33.380 mediums or senses or taste is i don't know food is one of the most emotional topics or mediums

00:10:40.600 partially because it holds like everything in it it holds every sense you smell you taste you

00:10:46.220 all that it holds a lot of memories and um as you talk a lot about on the show nostalgia for

00:10:52.500 uh for previous times you know in good ways and hard ways sometimes uh yeah it transports you back

00:10:59.940 and also it like goes into your body and uh and so it also it like holds all these um questions

00:11:09.660 about health and nourishment and self-care and taking care of yourself so that also feels like 0.87

00:11:15.500 it matters diet culture shit definitely um and also like sustainability shit you know you're like 0.98

00:11:22.260 you know where are you getting the ingredients did you grow the ingredients like i just are you 0.99

00:11:27.060 wasting money yeah on too much food all that stuff yes sorry great i know i think about the fact that

00:11:33.600 like there was a magazine called cooking light that i like that was incredibly popular amongst

00:11:38.800 millennials and our moms for a very long time um i know whoo uh yeah so no that that's a great

00:11:45.680 answer for a very difficult question um it leads us into our very difficult questions from readers

00:11:52.320 OK, so we're going to talk about the Internet's role in cooking, the legacies of family recipes.

00:11:58.080 And then in the Ask Anne Anything part of the show, we're going to answer questions about how we actually keep our recipes organized and about paralysis of choice, like the stuff that we've kind of talked a little bit about already.

00:12:10.060 But for our first question, we're going to hear from one of our paid subscribers.

00:12:13.500 This is from Leah.

00:12:15.000 Looking for good recipes feels like when you all are talking about clothes.

00:12:18.740 there's one or two places i trust america's test kitchen cooks illustrated and if they don't have

00:12:24.280 the recipe i'm looking for it's a crapshoot what makes a recipe good oh such a good question such

00:12:32.660 a good question and i feel like my understanding of what makes a recipe good has changed with time

00:12:38.520 because it used to be what makes a recipe for me personally it used to be what makes a recipe

00:12:44.180 possible oh interesting was what made it good right and what do you mean that meaning i used

00:12:52.620 to cook on a grad school budget and so there would be all sorts of garnishes that if that

00:12:59.260 was essential to the recipe in any capacity no way right if the cheese was an expensive cheese

00:13:05.640 no if the meat was an expensive cut of meat like anything really anything more expensive than

00:13:10.980 chicken no yeah so those to me I could understand I could look at a recipe and understand it was a

00:13:17.640 good recipe or know from previous experience that it was a good recipe but it was an inaccessible

00:13:22.880 recipe to me that also I think is true for a lot of people when it comes to ingredients and you

00:13:29.880 know the availability of spices online has really changed the game but I still think that there are

00:13:36.460 a lot of people who just like don't have the capacity to find ingredients for various recipes

00:13:42.660 locally especially if they live pretty rurally so that's part of it for me too but I don't think

00:13:48.780 that actually answers the question I mean and a recipe that speaks to that is is a good recipe

00:13:53.040 sometimes like a recipe that says yeah that says like if you don't have this use this or

00:13:57.260 if that's too expensive use this or all that yeah no and so one of my favorite recipes is

00:14:04.920 this recipe that's been handed down through my family for kung pao chicken which was taught to

00:14:10.140 my mom by her fellow teacher in minneapolis in the early 80s and her fellow teacher was taiwanese

00:14:17.300 and had learned how to fashion a version of kung pao chicken with the ingredients that were

00:14:22.600 available to her in minnesota cool and so that meant like no black vinegar it meant a mix of like

00:14:30.380 wine i think in substitute for probably rice vinegar so like wine soy sauce some sugar

00:14:38.180 yeah like just a whole mix of things to kind of to create that aura of kung pao chicken

00:14:45.160 and that's what i grew up with and then you use spanish peanuts for the peanuts and um

00:14:50.440 and you usually we use like the dried red pepper some sort of red chili which would give it its

00:14:56.320 flavor, but none of the, like no five spice or anything like that. And I love that taste. I know

00:15:02.600 it's not quote unquote authentic, but I know it's also the result of someone trying to find the most

00:15:10.040 authentic version that they could make of their recipe with what they had. And also, isn't that

00:15:14.980 beautiful, right? I feel, I think one of the questions that I find myself asking over and

00:15:19.700 over, although there isn't really a good answer, is like, how do you preserve recipes from the place

00:15:25.200 that they came from, but also let them like adapt and change to wherever they land. Like,

00:15:29.320 can you have both? Is it okay that they change? You know, and it like is amazing that they change

00:15:34.300 actually. And what everybody tells me is just like, you know, write down the old way and then

00:15:38.600 do whatever you want. What makes a good recipe for you?

00:15:42.400 Well, I've been I was thinking about this. And I think I have to disclose to your listeners that

00:15:48.960 I'm a pretty good cook, but I'm like mostly interested in it as like a form of preservation

00:15:54.480 in a form of communication. So I like, can't tell you the way Eric repair or something would tell

00:16:01.800 you what makes a recipe good or bad. Like, I don't know about balance. But I my instinct in response

00:16:07.400 to that question is that I would like discourage people from trying to optimize for like, okay,

00:16:13.240 this recipe is definitely going to turn out the best that it will possibly taste. And just like

00:16:19.280 use, use it as a chance to explore. So like, I personally, I would try to learn the basics from

00:16:26.020 like what Samin Nosrat teaches us in salt, fat, acid, heat. And then if you're interested in,

00:16:34.400 like, you know, you read a story of a chef that kind of interests you and they have a recipe for

00:16:39.840 something, then like try it. Or if you have a piece of fish and you heard about this home cook,

00:16:46.560 you know see what they have for fish or you know I'm interested in Szechuan food and I know

00:16:51.880 Fuchsia Dunlap has this seminal book in English for Szechuan food let me choose like an easy

00:16:57.980 recipe from that kind of I don't know I would I would go by the messenger yeah and I think also

00:17:04.000 for me having some sort of explanation of like why you're adding the thing yes it's helpful

00:17:11.300 um as a okay cook um like i love this is so basic but when they're like add some lemon juice at the

00:17:19.860 end for some brightness yes i'm like oh that's why i'm adding the lemon that's why i spent 79

00:17:25.300 cents on the lemon which i never would have done in my like previous cooking iterations but like

00:17:30.160 that makes sense to me it is i also really love when um i don't know why more recipes don't do

00:17:35.260 this but when the ingredient list is separated between like here are the things you probably

00:17:38.940 already have in your pantry like you have garlic you have salt and pepper you have olive oil and

00:17:44.280 then on the other side here's the stuff you'll probably have to buy uh and then as you're kind

00:17:49.200 of going through the recipe they're like you know i always want a recipe to be like add the two eggs

00:17:54.080 add the half a cup of something so that you're not like going back and forth trying to uh you

00:17:58.220 know my biggest recipe pet peeve and i totally understand why they have to do this in the

00:18:02.060 cookbooks is when the sauces are in the back yes totally agree i know i know you just keep losing

00:18:11.060 your place you're like ah yeah i get it when they're using it like just reprint this reprint

00:18:16.700 three times i would love to have it next to every recipe that uses that sauce yeah it's also really

00:18:22.460 nice i agree with what you were saying about the lemon juice i love when a recipe kind of talks to

00:18:27.140 you like a normal person like it's a person talking to a person I find that very helpful

00:18:33.840 and relieving I love that you mentioned the idea that like we can't just be looking for the most

00:18:38.840 optimized like I love America's test kitchen but it definitely is like a millennial optimization

00:18:44.040 like oh this is going to be the best right or if you're looking even at like the star ratings

00:18:49.540 on in New York Times cooking yeah sometimes I find myself being like I'm only going to cook

00:18:55.120 five-star recipes. I know. Which is not great either. I know. I struggle with that. I totally

00:19:00.580 struggle with that too. And also, I was thinking also about, you know, the internet is so big that

00:19:06.540 so many people see different things. Like some people read blogs as a way to get recipes and

00:19:11.200 others use America's Test Kitchen. Yeah, I was surprised by that too. You wrote in your newsletter

00:19:17.080 recently, I think it was about People Magazine, about those sort of bland, forgettable brands

00:19:23.420 that like churn out content and that includes websites like allrecipes.com and simply recipes

00:19:28.900 and sometimes you just if you just google roast potatoes or like lemon vinaigrette that's what

00:19:33.540 comes up and you start to rely on their random star system um and yeah i find all that just sort

00:19:40.100 of just try to if it's not that good you learn something right that's the thing it's like and i

00:19:47.680 wish we could embrace this a little bit more and it's i think i particularly when you think of

00:19:52.740 But cooking as a hobby, sometimes it's hard to feel like you are pretty mediocre at it.

00:19:57.140 You're like, if I'm going to do it, if I'm going to spend time, if I'm going to spend money, then I should do the best thing instead of, like, it's great to be a dilettante in the kitchen.

00:20:07.880 And the best chefs and cooks, like, made a lot of bad things.

00:20:13.060 Yes.

00:20:15.220 Okay, our next question is one that we got back in February that helped spark the idea for the whole episode.

00:20:20.800 This is from Jessie.

00:20:22.260 What's going on with food blogs?

00:20:24.480 It seems like there has been a big backlash lately.

00:20:27.340 I've seen so many variations on the complaint,

00:20:29.940 I don't want to read your life story, I just want a recipe for chili.

00:20:33.300 But I remember in the heyday of food blogs, the early aughts or so,

00:20:37.200 the appeal of food blogs was not just the recipes,

00:20:39.900 but the opportunity to peek into the lives of the writers.

00:20:42.940 I'm thinking of people like Deb Perlman of Smitten Kitchen,

00:20:46.020 Molly Weisenberg of Orangette, Joy Wilson of Joy the Baker, etc.

00:20:50.580 I'm sure part of this is market saturation.

00:20:53.440 It seems like everyone started a narrative-driven food blog around this time, myself included,

00:20:58.360 so now the internet is full of way more cooks and life stories than we have the capacity to care about.

00:21:03.960 I think there's an SEO angle, too.

00:21:06.500 Google prefers long-form content, so some bloggers will churn out a lot of words that aren't necessarily saying anything.

00:21:12.640 But I think something has fundamentally changed about the way we interact with blogs, too.

00:21:17.680 Even Joy the Baker now has a jump to recipe button, so readers can skip the chit-chat.

00:21:22.620 And the chit-chat itself has a cursory quality these days, as if she knows no one is bothering to read it.

00:21:28.200 Are we just tired of this format?

00:21:30.400 Do we feel like the writing is a paywall of sorts?

00:21:32.700 Like, I shouldn't have to pay for recipes, and I also shouldn't have to read anything about them?

00:21:38.260 That's really great.

00:21:40.120 I think Jessie is so spot on with all of these observations, but what do you think?

00:21:45.560 Oh, I was going to actually, I love that quote, the writing being a paywall of sorts like that as a way to think about it is really funny.

00:21:53.620 I'd be curious what you think.

00:21:55.320 I mean, I don't think I have a great answer to it.

00:21:58.080 Part of it, I think, is related to the kind of organic push and pull of how much content and personal disclosure and story we think people want on the Internet.

00:22:07.560 I feel like that kind of comes and goes.

00:22:09.840 And that blogs like don't have editors.

00:22:13.480 So there's like space.

00:22:15.560 Yeah. What do you think?

00:22:17.560 Well, I think that there's like a small scale celebrification that's going on here, right?

00:22:21.620 That's always been part of it.

00:22:23.680 You are allowed intimacy through the little stories at the top, which makes you feel a connection, which makes you feel like the recipe might be better, for better or worse, right?

00:22:34.280 I think that people don't understand just how essential the personal narrative was for getting sucked into the recipes in the first place.

00:22:45.560 Smitten Kitchen might be slightly different here because I feel like it's become such a big phenomenon, like people under through the cookbooks, especially that even if you weren't reading Smitten Kitchen in the late 2000s, you can still understand like the legibility of a Smitten Kitchen type of recipe.

00:23:06.200 like is enough that you don't need to know deb's personal narrative but i also think one thing

00:23:12.180 that's interesting is like the the viability of these sites has gone down because seo has failed

00:23:17.700 us right like it's no longer the you can't make enough money through seo so you have like some

00:23:23.700 blogs have opted to have the the billion pop-ups yeah because it's the only way to make sustained

00:23:30.160 money like an actual stream of money that makes doing this as a full-time job viable

00:23:34.820 and some have switched to newsletters which are much more direct and also okay I'm gonna have a

00:23:41.760 little preamble and then I'm gonna have the recipe and I also think they're a little bit more

00:23:47.260 storable in that form in that you can like search in your email instead of search the entire

00:23:53.980 internet. Some cookbook writers and recipe authors that I know don't pay well their newsletters at

00:24:00.400 all, but many do for more recipe content and that sort of thing, which also makes it more

00:24:06.000 sustainable. So I think that's part of it. I don't know if we're actually answering the question

00:24:11.900 here about where this is all going. I don't know either. I think that's right. When I heard that

00:24:17.700 question, I thought, actually, I don't read food blogs anymore. I do rely on Substack and Instagram

00:24:27.540 and old school cookbooks. I've gone back to them. Yeah, in a way that's really interesting. I don't

00:24:33.780 yeah, but it did make me wonder how people feel about how much the personal is entwined now

00:24:42.060 in cooking like cookbooks used to be just like actually I'm going to teach you best practices

00:24:48.000 for cutting and and balancing and flavoring etc and now like a lot of them are based around

00:24:54.620 cultural identity or personal identity and I think a lot of people complain about that

00:24:59.140 but I actually think it's great yeah well and the other thing too is that so someone like Julia

00:25:05.380 Child like maybe the cookbook itself didn't have those aspects of her personality in the cookbook 0.57

00:25:11.460 but people had access to her through different modes right so so she had already been celebrified

00:25:17.680 through her appearances on television and part of why they liked her cookbook is because they

00:25:21.940 loved her right she made french cooking seem accessible and i think that now that accessibility

00:25:31.140 is a mix of blog newsletter podcasts appearances on various shows right like the different reality

00:25:40.620 shows that sort of thing but it I think if you want to sell a cookbook now and it would be

00:25:46.840 interesting to talk to a cookbook editor about this but I think now if you want to sell a cookbook

00:25:50.700 you have to have an Instagram following you have to have some sort of cult of personality around

00:25:57.660 you absolutely otherwise the publisher they're like why for the same reasons that a publisher

00:26:02.860 will say no to various other authors like you have to have a platform and so the way you develop a

00:26:08.520 platform is through narrative and personal information otherwise why do we need another

00:26:13.160 recipe for eggs yeah and like which fair and like sometimes some of these cookbooks are reinventing

00:26:21.860 the wheels 17 times over and some of them i think are introducing us to like different and innovative

00:26:26.620 ways of thinking about our food and the way that we cook and family and vegetables yeah i totally

00:26:32.600 agree that sort of thing but yeah i totally agree so the second half of the show we're going to talk

00:26:36.780 a little bit more about family recipes and the legacy of cooking. So I'd love to hear about

00:26:42.640 the legacy of cooking in your family. Sure. That's a lovely question. So I'm writing

00:26:47.720 a book about this region in what's now eastern Turkey called Anatolia, which is a region that

00:26:54.600 both of my grandparents are from. They were Greeks and Armenians who lived there for generations.

00:27:00.780 It's also kind of Asia Minor, that area.

00:27:03.720 And until about 100 years ago, there were just like tons of cultures who lived there.

00:27:09.100 The Greeks and Armenians, Turks, Kurds, Assyrians, Jews, Coptics, just it was like kind of full of people.

00:27:15.540 And it wasn't without its issues, but it had, it was under empire.

00:27:18.900 It was under like the Greek and the Roman and the Persian and the Ottoman Empire.

00:27:22.680 So it was like a place that was a fusion for cultures and foods.

00:27:28.480 And a lot of recipes that we know about and foods that we know about kind of come from that area.

00:27:34.020 Like, it's hard to know all these things, but they say the Armenians brought sort of yogurt from that region to America.

00:27:42.280 Baklava was one of the earliest recipes from that area.

00:27:45.120 Wine, you know, they like started coffee shops there in the, you know, 15th century.

00:27:50.140 But when the Ottoman Empire fell, many people were displaced, many forcibly.

00:27:55.480 my mom's family survived the Armenian genocide and ended up in the US and my dad's family did

00:28:02.280 this transfer of populations and ended up in Greece. And my grandmothers spoke different

00:28:08.300 languages. One spoke Greek and the other spoke English and Armenian. And they were different in

00:28:14.800 many ways. And they cooked basically the same. And the foods that they made were like, very

00:28:21.360 familiar. They made dolma, they made yalenji, they made kefta, they made chedeg. And they had

00:28:27.800 slightly different names, but they just tasted the same. And when they met each other, they kind of

00:28:32.500 like were like laughing about the fact that the food was the same. And so as I've gotten, it's like

00:28:36.980 very much a form of nourishment in my family and a form of like, it was like a thing that survived

00:28:42.640 and kept our cultures alive, especially on the Armenian side. But it also made me realize that

00:28:47.660 there are cultures all over the world that have been like displaced and that have moved and that

00:28:51.500 are like doing this combination of preserving and fusing and merging cuisines and it made me

00:28:57.660 really interested in in all that well and it's so complicated too because i feel like there is

00:29:02.460 i think very good discussion lately about okay so if we if i want to make a certain type of curry

00:29:12.300 maybe I should look for a recipe that is written by someone who comes from that tradition

00:29:19.800 instead of a white person who has adapted an existing recipe to make it more palatable to

00:29:29.100 white people and then like there's also this current of like like I've seen a lot of recipes

00:29:35.000 like Palestinian recipes recently that when we feel helpless about what is going on in a place

00:29:41.980 in the world, or feel like we want to keep something visible, the way that we do so is

00:29:47.420 by honoring that culture through seeking out recipes that matter, right?

00:29:55.220 Right.

00:29:55.460 We make makluba or something.

00:29:56.940 And there are also so many recipes that do matter, right, that have meaning infused into

00:30:01.640 them through the centuries.

00:30:05.080 Yeah.

00:30:05.180 Yeah. Adding to that complication is one that like there's things like curry powder is a kind of colonial invention.

00:30:14.520 Right.

00:30:14.740 It's like invented by British colonizers to get the feeling of Indian food in the West.

00:30:22.680 And then adding another level is just like the kind of nationalist fervor that can sometimes be an undercurrent under a lot of these recipes.

00:30:30.960 Like if you ask a Greek and an Armenian and a Turk what their coffee is called, they'll call it their coffee when really it's the same.

00:30:37.940 It's the little, you know, coffee with the grounds on the bottom.

00:30:40.100 If you talk to an Italian about pizza, they don't want to know that pizza was kind of brought from Napoli to New York and then kind of made into the pizza it is today and then brought back. 0.59

00:30:51.820 It's, yeah, it's fascinating. 0.99

00:30:53.860 Right.

00:30:54.280 Which means that we have lots to talk about.

00:30:56.220 Totally.

00:30:56.580 First question comes from another one of our paid subscribers, Kate.

00:31:02.380 Why are people so possessive over sharing family recipes?

00:31:06.740 Is it a regional or cultural thing?

00:31:09.340 I'm from the Pacific Northwest, and I cannot fathom being so territorial about keeping a secret recipe.

00:31:15.860 But the internet leads me to believe that it is not uncommon.

00:31:19.400 Why?

00:31:21.260 Classic Pacific Northwest question here.

00:31:24.180 It's like, we don't have any culture.

00:31:26.580 why would I keep anything a secret or like we don't have any accents or you know when it

00:31:32.000 absolutely there is culture and accents and all sorts of things not limited to the fact that

00:31:37.500 Idaho is the home of fry sauce or secret sauce as it's sometimes called which is just

00:31:43.460 ketchup and mayonnaise oh very secret sauce fascinating so what do you think about this

00:31:50.700 in terms of gatekeeping and the cooking and family connections all of this well the funny

00:31:55.300 thing is uh i it's a really great question um and it immediately made me think of my grandmother who

00:32:01.040 was like this and now she's she's died you know when i was 11 or 12 and i'm very mad at her now

00:32:06.600 because i'm quite sure that she was hiding them so that we would miss her more so passive aggressive

00:32:12.940 it really she was sort of or maybe just direct aggressive like she you know so we could say oh 0.99

00:32:18.240 you know i miss the way grandma made doma and i try to make it but she hid that secret ingredient

00:32:22.900 from us, so it just won't ever be the same. And I was telling my boyfriend, Larry, about this,

00:32:28.320 and he said, why are you mad at her? And I said, because I'm now chasing this thing that makes this

00:32:34.900 delicious. I'm annoyed that every time I make it, it's not as good. And he said, well, you know,

00:32:40.680 it's really added a lot of momentum to your chase for that flavor. And so maybe she knew what she

00:32:45.640 that's real you know i'll say that the reason i kept um my secret cookie recipe so secret was

00:32:53.740 because it was pretty straightforward like my secret recipe is that you take the toll house

00:32:59.080 recipe and you substitute half of the butter for crisco and then uh add a little extra flour

00:33:06.300 and make them pretty chunky um and that's you know that's a particular type of chocolate chip cookie

00:33:12.160 or any type of cookie that people like.

00:33:14.480 But, like, no one wants to be like, you know what the secret is.

00:33:17.080 I know.

00:33:18.020 Shortening.

00:33:19.320 Actually, and I think you're right that a lot of the secret ingredients

00:33:22.080 are kind of embarrassing secrets. 0.93

00:33:23.960 I think for some of the, like, some of the Armenian secret ingredients

00:33:26.580 for Armenian-American old ladies was, like, this thing called gravy master. 0.99

00:33:31.280 It's this sort of, like, kind of gross, you know, 0.96

00:33:34.160 it's this kind of sticky yellow four substance.

00:33:37.760 Another was Lipton's onion powder.

00:33:40.140 Yeah.

00:33:40.760 Yeah.

00:33:41.200 Like, really, it's just salt.

00:33:44.080 Yeah.

00:33:44.620 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:45.020 It's just like...

00:33:45.840 Salt and chemicals.

00:33:46.680 Yes.

00:33:47.300 Like a binding agent for the gravy, right?

00:33:49.860 Yeah.

00:33:50.320 That's fascinating.

00:33:51.660 That's a great question.

00:33:52.640 Just short.

00:33:53.900 Yeah, I think, too, like, there is...

00:33:55.900 It's fun to have something that feels like your own.

00:33:58.460 Yes.

00:33:58.920 Right?

00:34:00.060 Especially if you arrive at it in some capacity.

00:34:03.560 And, like, other people who sell cookbooks, like, they profit.

00:34:07.220 They get...

00:34:07.680 And I don't mean this in a crass way.

00:34:09.360 Like they're able to profit from their secret recipes.

00:34:13.060 It's true.

00:34:13.640 And if you do not want to sell your secret recipe, the way that you confer value onto it is you make it incredibly valuable through the fact that no one else can make it.

00:34:25.660 Exactly.

00:34:26.260 It really is.

00:34:27.080 It does give it a value that it would lose entirely.

00:34:31.160 Yeah.

00:34:31.360 And I think, too, like some of this historically, you know, the way that recipes circulated in a small town, like there would be the recipes that maybe you would clip from the newspaper or from a magazine and that were passed down to you.

00:34:44.460 But then there were, like, you know, everyone had a potato salad recipe or, like, I love looking at the old Lutheran church recipe books from Minnesota that, like, my mom contributed to and my grandma contributed to.

00:35:00.660 And everyone has, like, a Kringler recipe.

00:35:04.820 And you have to figure out, okay, and it just says things like Flo's Kringler.

00:35:09.820 Exactly.

00:35:10.680 Flora's Kringler.

00:35:11.560 You have to figure out whose is the best. Right. And so there's a currency, especially amongst people who maybe didn't have social currency in other ways of having the best.

00:35:24.360 It's a really good point. And those those community cookbooks are like incredible documents. You can get them also at like secondhand stores. A lot of times I've I've accumulated too many of them, but it's true. Even the even the Armenian ones, it'll say like it'll have like seven different types of cheddar. It's just a little different, right? Like just one ingredient different or things are just like the ratios are a little bit different. And it's a very unhelpful when you're looking through it.

00:35:52.660 But you're right. At the time and in that community, it ascribed like kind of different values to different families.

00:35:59.820 Like maybe you could find the one that most tasted like the one that felt like home to you.

00:36:04.800 Yeah, exactly. And sometimes some of those people are from, it would say, sort of Harput Kefta versus Tokat Kefta, which like from different actual cities within this region in Anatolia that they were all from.

00:36:18.860 It's cool. Good stuff.

00:36:20.380 I also think that the sharing of family recipes isn't a universal experience. And some of this, I think, happened in the post-war era, post-World War II era, when assimilation and fast food and all of these different things kind of short-circuited some of the passage of these recipes. But we have a question from a listener named Lindy about what that feels like.

00:36:44.800 My parents didn't really cook when I was growing up, so I don't really have family recipes that were taught to me or handed down.

00:36:52.660 Is it really that common for people to have these nostalgic recipes?

00:36:56.740 Is it regional? Is it class-related?

00:36:59.600 So many other kids I knew were similarly growing up on Hamburger Helper and Lunch Meat Sandwiches.

00:37:05.540 So what do you think, Kara?

00:37:07.200 I love this question.

00:37:08.460 Me too.

00:37:08.920 Um, and, uh, I think it's probably common for families to have ways that they show love

00:37:15.180 and how that happens or whether that happens through food is probably cultural and regional.

00:37:22.060 Um, I think I, I told the story at the beginning of my mother making cheese bedegg as a way

00:37:28.840 to, you know, nurture or show love.

00:37:30.840 It's a very ritual act.

00:37:32.720 my partner, Larry, his family is a big Irish Catholic family from Philly. And they don't 0.99

00:37:41.600 have a lot of recipes that they've passed down. And when you do sort of ethnicity research,

00:37:46.120 you learn that the descendants of Irish immigrants don't really have a lot of food traditions.

00:37:50.680 They're descendants of the potato famine. They have other traditions. But they're also from

00:37:55.160 Philly. And so their love language is ham and cheese sandwiches. And there's an art to all of

00:38:01.520 it. There's an art to the roll. There's an art to the thinness of the ham slice and the type of

00:38:06.680 cheese and the thinness of the cheese and the amount of mayo and the pickle or the no pickle.

00:38:11.420 And when I met his parents, his father gave me a slice of ham that was rolled in cheese and sort

00:38:17.560 of winked at me and gave it to me. And it was like, it spoke. It was like, you're in. It was

00:38:24.000 a really loving act. And so I think, yeah, I think it really is cultural and regional. And it can be

00:38:30.660 many things it doesn't have to be an ancient delicacy or whatever that's such a good point

00:38:36.260 also really makes me want to eat that sandwich right now it's so good it's the best i mentioned

00:38:42.200 this in the prelude to this question but i think about how like my grandma became a really bad cook

00:38:48.980 in the post-war era and my grandma on the other side also horrible cook and sometimes people are

00:38:55.700 like offended that i say that yeah but it's how they were taught like their understanding of

00:39:02.020 aspirational middle-class cooking was to cook everything canned with recipes from better homes

00:39:07.940 and gardens or whatever right yeah so like so and again this is very midwestern like

00:39:12.540 they left behind the recipes that might have been passed down save for desserts and special

00:39:19.580 occasions right as a mode of assimilation right so they were on my my norwegian side it's um

00:39:27.180 my grandma's mom only spoke norwegian so then they were like the first real assimilationists

00:39:34.440 um and also we're coming out of the depression like that one-two punch of depression world war

00:39:39.560 ii sacrifice suddenly we have like i don't know we have a dishwasher and we're expected to cook

00:39:48.020 uniquely with cream of mushroom soup um it's a really amazing point that like that it just cut 1.00

00:39:55.140 off yeah the lineage in some ways right and then you also have the way that um more and more women 0.96

00:40:03.540 entering the workforce i think also serves to change some of the texture of like what recipes 0.99

00:40:10.420 did and did not get passed down yes yeah like there were always women in the workforce who

00:40:15.620 are still cooking like that and there are women in the workforce today who are still cooking

00:40:18.880 obviously but like if you have women whose primary job is not no longer keeping house 0.95

00:40:23.960 yeah then the maintenance of those recipes in some ways deteriorates yeah so it's so before

00:40:31.140 post-war uh post-war era uh we think about our ancestors and they were like often if they were

00:40:38.080 keeping house cooking was like one of the few creative outlets they had and so they were really

00:40:43.200 really good at the things they made because they were making it repeatedly they were keeping some

00:40:47.920 culture alive doing it and it was like a source of pride for their family some sort of identity

00:40:53.360 marker for them and their family um and then you're saying i think back to actually the way

00:40:58.460 that my um yeah that my mother cooked although she had her sort of historic recipes but but back

00:41:04.260 then a lot of moms you're right they worked and then there were like a couple dishes every parent

00:41:09.040 did in America. It was like a piece of fish, meatloaf, chicken, lasagna. Maybe there was a

00:41:14.940 taco night. Spaghetti with prego. Spaghetti with prego. Totally. Taco night. That's like

00:41:20.720 hard shell tacos. Totally. No authentic Mexican taco. And yeah, just like some like ground beef

00:41:28.000 with taco seasoning on top. Right. Yeah, exactly. And taco sauce. And maybe to impress their guests

00:41:36.380 or something, they would cook French or Italian from the joy of cooking.

00:41:40.240 Right.

00:41:40.680 But it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't what it is now.

00:41:44.720 And I think probably it does have something to do with how many generations you are removed

00:41:49.020 from immigration to a new country too.

00:41:52.440 Because if you are new to a place and maybe don't have a ton of money, you want to cook

00:41:59.680 in a way that has the least waste possible, which means you cook the recipes that are

00:42:04.900 most familiar to you that you know exactly how to cook right right right right like I always think

00:42:10.660 about there's this article in the New York Times that's like going after people who say that you

00:42:16.560 know as a new mom you should be have introducing your kid to every new food possible like that's

00:42:21.920 a sign of great parenting with no acknowledgement of how that sort of food waste like the cost of

00:42:30.020 that sort of food waste if you are a parent if you're trying to parent on a budget so like I

00:42:34.420 think there's like all of those different things intersecting and then I like I want to return to

00:42:40.560 your original point which is that food tradition can take so many different forms it could be boxed

00:42:47.020 brownies yes yeah it could be tool house cookies with Crisco absolutely that's some of the best and

00:42:54.220 most comforting food traditions so we've got two more questions that will have more practical

00:42:57.900 answers and we're going to discuss them in the ask and anything part of the show this would normally

00:43:03.460 be paywalled, but today's episode is free for everyone. First up is this question from Jess,

00:43:09.220 who's another one of our beloved paid subscribers. Adding my voice to the outcry of why does the

00:43:15.040 internet make it so hard to decide what to cook? Currently, I'm trying to find good options for

00:43:19.980 meal prepping lunches to take to work. And between New York Times cooking, America's Test Kitchen,

00:43:25.000 a bunch of sub stacks and many actual cookbooks. I am overwhelmed by choice and I'm probably just

00:43:30.400 going to make the same kale Caesar salad I always make. Besides being paralyzed by choice, I admit

00:43:36.340 I have hangups about wasting food. I don't want to try a new recipe that ends up being disappointing

00:43:40.820 and wasteful. How can I just jump in and start making the recipes I've saved and bookmarked and

00:43:45.940 post-it noted? Wow, Jess already listened to our entire episode. I know. She's taking all of our

00:43:52.300 themes and wrapping them up for us. I know, it's really good. All right, so does this feeling feel

00:43:56.880 familiar to you yeah definitely feels familiar i've personally totally given up but one thing

00:44:03.760 i have found is um uh youtube can be helpful for this uh like you know how i meal prepped for a

00:44:11.100 week kind of a thing i like places where actually uh they're thinking about the cost element and

00:44:19.120 the like waste element of of preparing for like a period of time and keeping that in mind it's like

00:44:25.360 really necessary if you're going to try to figure out something with so many moving parts.

00:44:29.820 It's really hard to like go through a million tabs and one thing needs spinach and the other

00:44:36.180 needs kale and the other needs chicken and the other needs tofu. And yeah, I find that really

00:44:41.220 helpful. Also, I don't know, Facebook groups are kind of good for this, I think, just like

00:44:45.560 communities where you can kind of talk to people who do it and they find situations that work for

00:44:49.700 them I think a lot of parents I know my sister has some trouble figuring out what to feed her

00:44:55.940 kid for lunch every day so they get help from other parents what are you thinking I used to

00:45:05.840 be very good at this first when I was a grad student in poor because I would just like make

00:45:10.880 the same things almost all the time and then eat them for two days and I still do that my partner

00:45:15.740 and I still do that. Like we make a big meal and we eat it for the second day too. Yeah. I got

00:45:20.420 really good at it during the pandemic because trying to dramatically decrease the number of

00:45:25.880 store visits. And then I live on an Island that doesn't have a grocery store. We have like

00:45:30.520 a bodega essentially. Right. And once a year, the ferry goes out for three to four weeks. And so

00:45:36.720 you could still go on a foot ferry, but most people try to stock up for as much as they

00:45:41.280 possibly can for those three to four weeks. Wow. That's so cool. That's such a great way

00:45:45.160 of thinking about cooking yeah so it's really useful I plan out you know my partner and I come

00:45:50.560 up with a list of things that we'd like to eat and then we plan out we have to plan out like the

00:45:55.040 stuff that uses the most fresh vegetables first and then at the end there's like the dregs right

00:46:01.300 and so it's always like um some version of pasta ecc because all you need is a little bit of kale

00:46:07.520 and kale can last for so long true so and you can also get like if one of the farm stands is open

00:46:13.340 you can get it from there so or um we have like some old trader joe's meatballs in the freezer

00:46:19.640 and we just and we're like let's get a nice canned spaghetti sauce and then put it on pasta

00:46:25.900 yeah amazing that it's pretty good yeah really incredible yeah i think that like

00:46:31.700 and i'm really mindful of this in terms of like splitting household labor

00:46:36.120 and this applies too if you are a person who lives by themselves and is overwhelmed by the

00:46:41.840 idea of like I somehow I always have to cook for myself isn't that the worst I know so I try to

00:46:49.380 really share the listing of ideas of things that we would like to make and then put that into like

00:46:59.460 a weekly or bi-weekly shopping trip and then just be like oh and then we're gonna do this and we're

00:47:04.640 gonna do this and cook the things that need the freshest stuff first yes yeah yeah I agree when I

00:47:11.020 lived alone. I did a lot of cooking on Sunday and then freezing in individual portions. And then

00:47:18.240 so I could like kind of take things from the week before. So I wasn't so bored eating the same thing

00:47:22.480 for too long a period of time. And now my partner and I, yeah, we do sort of Sundays. We like do it

00:47:28.640 together. We're like, you know, at a farmer's market or like at a supermarket, like, oh, yeah,

00:47:32.820 that sounds good. That sounds good. OK, we could do that for Monday. OK, Wednesday, we could do

00:47:36.260 that okay yeah we could use that for that yeah and um or even the idea of a keeper right like

00:47:41.920 there's a there's a spin kitchen cookbook called keepers like if you have a list on your fridge

00:47:48.020 door that says keepers and you add a recipe to that then you can consult that list like yeah i

00:47:55.040 think having it not just as something on your computer because there's too much there's too

00:47:58.420 much shit in our digital lives like if you have something that you have written out yeah that

00:48:03.540 references the things that you really like and want to go back to and know that you can do well 0.98

00:48:07.800 it's amazing it's a really good idea put it on your fridge fridges are meant to be cluttered and

00:48:12.420 have handwritten things on them anyway absolutely that is my firmest belief it shows a life well

00:48:18.400 lived okay but what about this question about like risk i and i think this goes back to something we

00:48:25.580 were discussing before about this idea that like your hobby you should be good at your hobby yeah

00:48:29.920 Yeah, it goes back to this thing that I keep reminding myself to do, which is like, don't try to make the best. Like, it's actually you get a good story out of make messing something up. You learn some technique from messing something up. It all becomes part of like, I try to think about cooking as like a bigger sort of exploratory thing that I'm doing. And sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't.

00:48:57.160 And when it doesn't, I can go to somebody who knows more than me and say, like, I bought all these sweet potatoes and I did that thing so that I could eat them all week.

00:49:04.940 But then I burned them.

00:49:05.940 And what am I supposed to do?

00:49:07.020 And then some elder can, like, teach me something that then I implement the next time.

00:49:11.400 And then suddenly you're kind of it's almost like if you don't do it and mess it up, if you don't just, like, kind of commit to one, give it a shot and then make a fun framing around it, even if you mess it up, it's all kind of part of it.

00:49:27.160 Yeah, and it's ultimately not that big of a loss.

00:49:29.700 No, no, no.

00:49:30.700 Unless you're cooking 70 lobsters.

00:49:33.860 Don't do that without some expertise.

00:49:38.780 Can I give my one tip?

00:49:41.460 Please.

00:49:41.900 Yes.

00:49:42.440 If you're going to try something new that you're really nervous about,

00:49:45.720 just have a variety of hot sauces on hand

00:49:48.440 because anything kind of gross can be improved with sriracha or cholula.

00:49:55.480 ask me how I know

00:49:57.480 yeah 100% you're like

00:49:59.820 oh this is kind of bland more

00:50:01.860 salt more hot sauce

00:50:03.340 totally and the other is just to

00:50:05.860 actually like make

00:50:07.800 a sort of game around it

00:50:09.740 sometimes I'm like I have too many lentils

00:50:11.600 I just this week I'm using

00:50:13.920 the stuff in my

00:50:15.220 I'm using the lentils I'm using the black beans

00:50:17.440 yes and then I like that make it fun

00:50:19.400 it's almost like gamification you're like

00:50:21.580 how many dishes

00:50:22.940 can I add to this? How many farts can I add to this? Turns out endless. Our last question is

00:50:33.580 from another paid subscriber, Casey. And it's one that I see every time that I do a What Are You

00:50:39.560 Cooking thread in the Culture Study newsletter. So let's hear it. How do you keep your recipes

00:50:44.260 organized? Are people printing these things? Is Pinterest still a thing people under the age of 60

00:50:50.900 use? I have a New York Times subscription and many beloved cookbooks with dog-eared pages and a

00:50:56.520 handful of sites that I refer to constantly for inspiration, but is there like an app for that?

00:51:02.780 Am I trying to optimize a thing that is fundamentally not meant to be optimized?

00:51:08.000 My grandma had a shoebox and those church lady spiral-bound cookbooks. My mom has a recipe card

00:51:13.800 binder and a lot of magazine clippings. All I have is chaos and a sometimes good memory for where I

00:51:19.960 found things but there's got to be a better way okay so there is an app for this that i do not

00:51:27.180 use what's the app but that has been come highly recommended from other people which it's called

00:51:33.760 paprika and you i think that to get full utility you have to subscribe so it's yet another thing

00:51:41.640 to subscribe to but i think if you really are devoted to doing this sort of recipe organization

00:51:47.600 then it's worthwhile this is gonna be my chance to wax nostalgic about the way that my mom

00:51:53.120 organizes recipes which is she prints them out or tears them from pages r.i.p like all of the

00:52:00.460 old magazines that we used to actually tear it out from although i did cook she cooked a recipe

00:52:04.920 from the seattle times the print seattle times the other week and i asked for it and it was great

00:52:09.660 she like took a picture of the print seattle times and sent it to me and i carried on that

00:52:15.400 tradition when i left home and i had a big binder like a three ring binder three inches you know

00:52:21.200 that had all of my recipes organized by like appetizer main pasta dessert all of these

00:52:29.660 different things and there's something so wonderfully tactile about it and you would

00:52:34.560 write and i still do this in my cookbooks every time that you make it who you made it for yes

00:52:40.100 and any notes about additions and that sort of thing yes the closest I have to that now I

00:52:46.900 sloughed off that cookbook in one of many many moves and I'm I'm still kind of sad about it but

00:52:53.440 the closest I have to that now is my copy of Melissa Clark's dinner which was like my pandemic

00:53:01.260 bible and I've cooked nearly everything in it and it is like the best sort of wrinkled and

00:53:07.700 grease marked and has many different marks of different like you know different times that we

00:53:14.980 made different recipes in quarantine and and still today yeah but uh yeah what's your tip

00:53:20.820 i think that's really good advice actually i was gonna one of my tips is gonna be the same which

00:53:24.940 is that like every time you cook something from a cookbook um to write the date at the top and

00:53:29.180 who you cooked it for and my advice initially was to kind of let the produce or the food help

00:53:35.100 choose for you. So if you know you want shrimp or fennel or something, then like give yourself a

00:53:40.280 time limit and kind of think back to things that you've made that were similar. And sometimes

00:53:45.160 you'll find yourself on a page where you'd written about other times that you had cooked it for other

00:53:49.800 people. And actually you start to develop your own little collection of recipes. But the other

00:53:56.700 thing, I think you're right. I really actually, this makes me want to go back and do this. Print

00:54:02.880 out the stuff that you like, um, or that you really believe you want to make and make your

00:54:08.960 own, put it together.

00:54:10.020 Like actually the, um, the tangible stuff is the stuff that makes the internet feel,

00:54:16.340 uh, uh, less and less and scary and unorganizable.

00:54:23.200 Um, and that's kind of what I think a lot of us are, are trying our best to do.

00:54:27.620 Uh, in a way that was kind of what I did when I made my family cookbook, uh,

00:54:32.700 was just to kind of just, like, put everything together,

00:54:35.140 ask everyone in my family who made things that I knew we loved

00:54:38.940 and wanted to keep and just, like, put it all together

00:54:40.620 and print it out for all of us so that we could hold it in our hands.

00:54:44.020 And now we all use it all the time, which is my favorite thing about it.

00:54:46.720 Not that they liked it, whatever, but we use it, which is nice.

00:54:50.280 Well, and that's the thing, is that the thing that you use

00:54:52.520 is the thing that's right, right?

00:54:53.900 So, like, this Paprika app, I think that I would download it

00:54:57.860 and then not use it very often, unfortunately.

00:55:00.140 And so I have to figure out, okay, what is the actual way that I use stuff?

00:55:05.780 And as much as I fucking hate printers with every single ounce of my being, and I think this is a particular millennial affliction because the printers that we had when we graduated were so bad that we're traumatized by horrible printers.

00:55:23.040 And now there's all these cheap, very reliable printers. 0.96

00:55:27.880 Like the brother printer is so easy.

00:55:29.520 It doesn't need to be in color.

00:55:31.120 It's just so straightforward, but I still hate it.

00:55:32.360 I know, and you print it through Wi-Fi from your phone,

00:55:35.400 and it feels like the future somehow.

00:55:37.860 But somehow I can't get my current computer to connect to it,

00:55:40.500 so anytime I need something printed, I have to send a PDF to my partner

00:55:43.640 and be like, can you print this?

00:55:45.240 Like I'm a two-year-old, but the best app or the best organizational tool

00:55:51.660 is the one that you will use.

00:55:53.120 And so for me, that might be printing out recipes

00:55:56.480 and stuffing them in the pages of the other cookbooks that I go to most often.

00:56:01.600 Yeah.

00:56:02.600 I think that's a really, really, really great strategy.

00:56:04.740 And it's totally hideous, but also great, right?

00:56:09.280 It works.

00:56:10.760 So that is our advice.

00:56:12.800 I think that people were hoping that you would have or I would have some genius hack,

00:56:18.760 but the truth is that no genius hack is out there because we live in this era

00:56:24.000 where stuff is all over the place in our lives. Right. And actually, like if your brain naturally

00:56:30.740 optimizes in that way, then like you will have found your system. And the best advice I can give

00:56:37.360 is just like if you don't have a system, it's fine. None of us do. And and just find the little

00:56:43.040 things that work for you, like printing out your things and putting them in the cookbooks that you

00:56:47.440 use the most. And, you know, it might be a fun exercise. And maybe I'll do this this year. You

00:56:52.140 You know, at the end of the year, it's fun to do sort of like reflective exercises in some capacity that aren't about, you know, like instead of resolving to like cook more new recipes, which is such like a common new resolution.

00:57:04.940 For sure.

00:57:05.320 Instead, look back, look back on what you actually made that year.

00:57:09.480 See if you can remember, right?

00:57:10.900 Leaf through your cookbooks, go into your New York Times app, like go into your email, see what you actually cooked and then take the ones that you like the most and turn that into a little cookbook of 2024.

00:57:22.140 Yeah, that's a really great idea.

00:57:24.260 I'll do that too.

00:57:25.380 Yeah, maybe we can come back and talk about it more.

00:57:28.560 Yeah, perfect.

00:57:29.600 Okay.

00:57:30.160 Check back in January.

00:57:32.340 How do we do?

00:57:33.060 Yeah, that sounds great.

00:57:34.420 Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:57:36.900 Where can people find you on the internet if they want to hear more from you?

00:57:39.280 Thank you, Anne.

00:57:39.960 This was like the joy of my life.

00:57:42.200 It was really so much fun.

00:57:43.760 People can find me on Instagram at LilaRapp.

00:57:46.980 I'm there a lot asking questions and making stuff and ruining recipes and all that stuff.

00:57:53.160 I also host the Life and Art podcast.

00:57:56.540 So wherever you listen, just search for Life and Art with FD Weekend.

00:58:01.080 Amazing.

00:58:01.660 Thank you so much.

00:58:02.660 Thank you.

00:58:06.780 Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

00:58:09.140 Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

00:58:11.520 We have so many great episodes in the works, and I promise you that you don't want to miss any of them. 0.97

00:58:17.380 Some of the shows we're planning include Queer Pop Stars, Midwestern Masculinity, Why Thrifting Absolutely Sex Now, Women's Sports, and something we're calling What the Fuck Is Going On With This Clothing Brand.

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00:58:36.940 go to our google form at tinyurl.com slash culture study pod or check the show notes for a link

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00:59:15.160 newsletter. It takes you directly to the place where you get the discount code. If for some

00:59:19.620 reason you can't figure it out, just send me an email and I'll help you out. For our discussion

00:59:24.880 this week, I'd love to hear about how you manage that tension between heritage recipes and

00:59:30.780 contemporary recipes or how you organize your recipes, it'd be really great to hear. You can

00:59:35.940 just go to culturestudypod.substack.com and we will all be hanging out there talking about it.

00:59:41.880 The Culture Study Podcast is produced by me, Anne Helen Peterson, and Melody Rowell. Our music is by

00:59:47.140 Poddington Bear. You can find me on Instagram at Anne Helen Peterson, Melody at Melodius 47,

00:59:52.980 and the show at Culture Study Pod. Thank you so much.

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Culture Study Podcast - September 04, 2024

Cooking in the Age of Infinite Recipes

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