Never Put Meatballs on Spaghetti, with Samin Nosrat

I'm snorting, I'm snorting already. Already, we haven't even started. Let's get out. Did it do, science? Jazz with our favourite nerds. Yeah. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. Today on the show, the wonderful chemistry and science of food. Yeah, because, you know, even if you've never set a fire. If you've never set foot in a lab, you are doing a little bit of science every day when you add a little salt to your pasta or you cook your vegetables, or even if you make a Betty Crocker cake. You are doing some really cool science. And one award-winning chef who's thought a lot about all this is Semine Nussrat. She's the author of the best-selling book, Salt Fat Acid Heat. She has a new book out. It's called Good Things. And I've wanted to get Sivine on the show for ages because she makes me think about cooking and the food that I shove in my mouth in this completely new and very nerdy way. And so that's what we're talking about today, the science of cooking. Plus, why you should never put meatballs on spaghetti. My interview with Semine Nussrat is coming up just after the break. Welcome to the show, Sivine. Thank you so much for coming in. Thanks so much for having me. Growing up in San Diego, I've heard you say, and you write about it a little bit in the new book, but you never really felt like you belonged that much in San Diego. Can you tell us about it? Well, I mean, my family's from Iran and my parents came to San Diego sometime in the mid-70s. In 1979, there was a religious revolution in Iran. So a lot of people sort of sensed that coming. And my parents, my father's side of the family was a practice of religion called the Baha'i Faith, and they were persecuted. So they all fled and were religious assailees. And my mom came after, followed my dad here. And so I was born here. And I was born here to a family who wasn't entirely like willingly in San Diego. Like it was just, right, there's the trauma of leaving your homeland behind my, you know, we, there was in ways I, I'm sure I can't imagine and probably many ways I witnessed. There was racism and sort of Islamophobia directed at us and to my parents. And I'm sure that they had a pretty clear sense of like not feeling very welcome or belonging here. And I also think because they didn't leave, especially my mom did not leave Iran thinking she'd be gone forever. My mom would say things like, you know, when you go, when you leave this house, like you're, you're stepping into America. But when you step over the threshold into the house, this is Iran. And you're going to like behave like an Iranian child, right? And I, my mom, it was so important for her to instill in us a relationship to the place that we were from. And one of the ways that she did that sort of most powerfully was through food. And so, and I have always loved to eat. So like, and the food is good. And your mom's an amazing. And my mom's a great cook. Yeah. And I were, there were things where like I would bring Persian food to school for lunch and people, you know, it was the classic like immigrant kid being like, you, what's that? The smell of the whatever in the lunch room. And they would have been eating some disgusting thing. And so, or like Americans are going to get mad at me saying that. But it's just, you think it's, oh, I actually love PBJ too. But I know it's a very American thing, though, like other, other cultures is like, what are you people doing putting that stuff in your mouth? But then, and what's funny is now like, you know, 40 years later Persian food and a lot of Middle Eastern Persian food a lot of times. It gets appropriated by non Iranian cooks into their onto their restaurant menus where it gets a sort of a glam like a makeover. And, and on the one hand, I'm really happy for more and more people to have exposure to our foods. And in other ways, it makes me so mad. Like, it's like you want our food, you know what I mean? You want to eat the crispy rice. You, or there was a drink I used to have. It's like a summer drink called Sekhan Jabeen, which is like a it's kind of like maybe, um, an early relative of a shrub. So it's like a vinegar and sugar syrup that's boiled down with mint. And you make this like really thick, very fragrant minty syrup. And it's so tangy and refreshing. It's kind of like the original gatorade in a way. Like right. It was just one of my favorite childhood things. And I remember having like a water bottle of it with the mint leaf in it when I was a kid. And some people be like little kids. Oh god. School were like, you gross. Like, what's a new water? Are you gross? Like alien? Yeah. You know, and now of course like every like hipster bar has shrubs on their menu. You know, so there's just this way where, um, I, I, it's like an extra pain, a level of pain where I'm like, this is yet another way in which like our humanity is not recognized. And you just like take from you pick and choose what you want. And this is like historically been done against all, you know, I mean like Americans love tacos, but he max again. So like it's just. It's not, it's not unique to us, but it does hurt when, when I feel that. You talk about in the, um, in your new book that as a kid, cake mixes became like a Betty Crocker cake became kind of obsession. Yeah, you know, what was it about the Betty Crocker cake or the cake mix? My mom, my mom was really, um, she had, she was very committed to like an organic only, like low sugar, you know, like sort of a very hippie, like rules in the household for the children of like the we're only eating fresh fruits and vegetables. And so it's not that we were never allowed dessert, but, but even when she went to get us the birthday cakes and things for occasions, special occasions, they came from like the finest European bakeries, right? And they were covered in chocolate shard and chocolate shavings and they were just this like dense chocolate cake and there I just never wanted to eat that. I wanted to eat what all the white kids had, like at the bake sales, I wanted to eat the fluffy yellow chocolate, you know, yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Like it was sought and I would have never been allowed to have that that would have just that was like not okay, we never entered our home. And so this is again going back to the like outside orness, I think it became a symbol like the yellow cake in a way became like the symbol of fitting in. And so, and there is something just extraordinary about cake mixes and they're the very light, like incredibly tender texture, which almost feels like it's like a space, like astronaut food or something because it's, it's not, it's like doesn't seem naturally achievable. And so I sort of became obsessed as a young cook and a with like there must be a way to achieve some sort of like lightness because every cake, you make a cake with butter and it's dense and heavy. You make, you know, you could use the same exact ingredients as what's in the, you think is in the yellow cake cake mix, you could follow the joy of cooking, Martha Stewart. Anybody is like classic yellow cake recipe and it would still come out quite dense and I just wanted this lightness yet how do the cake mixes do it what. So the well, my, this was a many year journey for me and I didn't know the science of it, but over time I learned that like butter is made of, you know, it's made of that primarily, but also milk solids, which are like proteins and water. It's an emulsion and so when you cream butter and you are like, you know whipping sugar into it to make this like kind of light texture, that's that you're aerating the butter and that's the main source of lightness in a cake. Butters in this kind of emulsist, it's like a magical state of emulsion. That's why it's like you can be on your counter and it's a solid, right? Yeah, it kind of has this incredible range of temperatures at which it stays in in this solid emulsified state, which is why it's like that amazing thing when you like spread butter cold butter on your warm toast and it's like kind of like some of it melts, but some of it's just soft still when you bite your bite into the soft butter. Yeah, and so you have that and the thing about it is the melting point of butter like chocolate is very close to human are our body temperature. So it's so pleasing the way it melts. It melts on the tongue in this really don't like amazing way, right? Yeah, that's like part of the piece of chocolate and like part of the pleasure of it is it's just like melting on your tongue. And so butter is kind of this miracle ingredient, but also like you have to understand there's water in there and when water and flour combine and start mixing, that's when gluten strands start forming and gluten is a like a protein. is leads to chewiness and toughness. It's what you want to develop gluten in something like a crusty loaf of bread so that when you cut into it or bite into it, you get that sourdough chew, you know what I mean? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But that's not the thing you want in a cake. And a cake you want it to crumble and dissolve tenderly on, or that's what I want, is like tenderness on my tongue. And so you wanna prevent gluten from forming, which is why they use lower protein, lower gluten flowers, things like cake flour and pastry flour to make cake. And also when you have oil, and so fat is inhibits gluten formation. It kind of coats flour and it makes, like you can think of it almost like it makes it slippery so the flour is not gonna combine into long gluten strands, 'cause it's kind of like lubricated by this outer layer of fat. - Right. - So then the thing that the way cake mix is made industrially, like at some point, I kind of went and learned about that. And it's made in these, you can think of them like massive food processors, just like huge machines where they combine all the dry ingredients with shortening, which is a solid fat. It's a solid oil, right? And they mix, and because it is solid, but it's soft at like these at regular room temperature, they can put shortening in there and coat the flour, mix it without any, they're pre, they're pre-loot oiling the flour in the cake mix so that when you bring it home and you add your oil and your water, your less gluten will form, but it doesn't, and it's done for so long and on such an industrial level and so carefully, that you can't see the fat, right? You don't see any of that. You can't, it just looks like flour and cocoa powder and you dump out a chocolate cake mix, but that's what's happened to it is like, the flour has all been pre-coded with fat. And so, I just was like, huh, I'll never be able to do that. I don't wanna make a cake with shortening, that's not gonna taste good. Like I want it to be with butter, but I don't know how to do this. And then at some point, I stumbled into, which is so funny, 'cause maybe if I had been looking, well like if I had been more methought, I'm not saying I'm like methodical in any of this, I am not a scientist. - But this is, where are we at two decades in this journey right now? - Yeah, which honestly, maybe if I had been more methodical, I could have solved this a lot sooner, because literally there is a book, it is like a, it is a legendary book called The Cake Bible. Like honestly, I could have just looked in the cake Bible. - Not a fat, come on. - Come on. - Come on. - Do you think like in Lord of the Rings, Fred, I could have just looked at the math. - Yes, you are. (laughing) - You've got the journey. (laughing) - Don't worry, don't worry. So, like Rose Levy Baronbaum is kind of this extraordinary, just well, like queen of cakes. And she wrote this book called The Cake Bible. So whereas when a typical yellow cake, a typical sort of homemade cake starts with room temperature butter that you're whipping sugar into, and that step is called creaming, reverse creaming sort of mimics what's done in the cake mix industry, right, where you take your flour and your sugar, and if you're using cocoa powder, whatever your dry ingredients are, and then you take very soft, but not too soft, not so soft, that it will separate into water and fat butter. You take butter that is just at the exact right temperature, and you work it into the flour very slowly in your mixer or your food processor. In such a way that like by the time you've worked all the flour in, it actually just looks, or excuse me, by the time you've worked the butter in, the flour just looks like a dry ingredient. It's kind of amazing. It's, it is this, but it's all about having the butter. Yeah, I mean, Rose did it, and so, and it was one of those things where I was like, this was here all along, and I feel like it's such an idiot. And also, I felt like a genius, because the first time I made it, people came over and I was like, I did it, you guys, I made a homemade Betty Crocker, and people were like, I don't, and then they started eating it. They're like, oh my God, it really tastes like it. So, it felt like that was truly a miracle, that I thought, I would, I know, there were so many bad cakes, on the way to that cake. - In the middle, you did it. I did it, yeah. Okay, so to continue on with your journey, a lot of people, including me, sort of first met you after you wrote the book, "Salt Fantasy Heats," which then became this Netflix documentary, which is amazing, the book, the documentary. For those who haven't come across it, what is the overriding thesis of "Salt Fantasy Heats"? - Yeah. It's basically that if you can sort of grasp why salt fat acid and heat are important elements and understand, you know, their function in the kitchen on flavor and on texture, and how to balance them, and how to use them, that they will work as sort of the four points on the compass for you, as a cook, no matter what you're cooking. And so whether or not you want to follow a recipe, paying attention to salt fat acid and heat will enhance the way that you feel independent, are able to cook instinctively understand what's going on underneath the sort maybe steps one through six that are at someone else's light, lays out for you. So that in case you need to substitute something, you understand why that vinegar was there and why it would work or wouldn't work to replace it with lemon juice. - Yeah. - So with salt and fat and acid, those are all tangible. Fats come in many forms, there's oils and butters, there's animal fats, and same with acid comes in many forms, but heat is kind of this like ineffable, intangible thing, but as a young cook, I kind of realized that was how everyone around me that I was looking up to and learning from really oriented themselves in the kitchen on any given day. And they were not always consulting cookbooks and recipes, the things we were always tasting for were salt and fat and acid. - I think about it every time I have avocado on toast, 'cause I'm like, it's mean would be so proud of me, I'm toasting my bread, there's my heat, I've got my avocado and then my salt and flat bread. - Yeah, there you go, you didn't mention, but I always think of it. - I mean, I am so glad. And that's the thing I always say is like, this is actually a lot simpler than you think. It's just some jargon, you have to wrap your mind around, but we all naturally do this. I mean, all of these things are things our palettes have evolved to seek and to enjoy, right? And so like if you are a person who goes has ever been to a takeria and has garnished your own burrito or taco with sour cream and or cheese and or salsa or guacamole and done it again and again until it tastes just right, then you're balancing the salt and the fat and the acid, right? Like you're doing it already. - And in salt fat acid heat, you talk about this story of working at Shape Honey, which you've mentioned, it's like this. For those who don't know, fancy restaurant in Berkeley, California where you got your start. And having this moment where you realize that salt is not just the sidekick for pepper, but actually can like completely reshape a meal. If you stride and you actually wrote, sorry if it's awkward that I'm quoting you. - No, but if one lesson stays with you, if one lesson from this book stays with you, let it be this salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. - It really does, yeah. - Would you know why that is? - It does so many amazing things. You salt meat in advance, which is to say like a chicken that you're gonna roast tomorrow. I would salt it today to give the salt plenty of time to be absorbed and be distributed evenly throughout the meat. That means like tomorrow when I roast it and I take a bite, I won't have salty skin and bland meat. I'm gonna have an evenly perfectly seasoned chicken, right? The salt has penetrated and gone all the way through. But also the salt will have worked on some of the proteins and so ultimately leading to much more tender meat. It sort of disables some of the proteins, leading to more tender meat. And that is like a crazy function. It's like just by salting your meat in advance, you will have a more tender meat. Salt also on, it has a kind of an ability, if you think about a tomato, like slicing a tomato and you salt your tomato slices and you wait a few minutes. And then you come back and you look and there's like, all this water has come around, right? There's like the tomato's juicier all of a sudden. And you take a bite of that tomato and the one that has salt, even if it's just a little bit of salt, so little that you don't actually taste it to be saltier, your experience of eating that tomato is gonna be totally different because what the salt has done is by bringing out not only water, but aromatic molecules out of the cells that it started to break down. That means with every bite, your nose is gonna breathe in so much more aroma. But the vast percentage of our experience of eating is smell, not taste, right? The vast experience. So the more access we have to aromatic molecules, the more profound our experience of eating is gonna be. The more perfumed and profound, right? So you are always after like, how do I get those aromatic molecules? It's the same as like why people, you know, tear fresh basil into the thing at the last minute 'cause you just want that smell, right? You want that smell as close to your eating experience as possible, right? The fragrance is what makes it sort of, of alive. So a lot of times sort of goes into cells, breaks things down. I was even surprised that salting correctly when cooking beans can make them more vibrantly colored. Yeah, totally. So what's happening when you have a very salty pot of water and a vegetable in it is immediately osmosis is going to start to happen in the pot, but also inside the vegetable, inside the cells of the vegetable. So it's going to start absorbing in an attempt to reach homeostasis, right? It's going to start absorbing salt from the pot into itself. So that and that's what's going to flavor it. And that means it's like holding on, right? It's it's pulling in minerals, right? It's in a state of pulling in minerals and not letting them out. Whereas if you cook your vegetables in under-seasoned water, then in an attempt to reach homeostasis, the vegetables are going to leech their minerals into the water. And with their minerals, also the chlorophyll will get affected. They will be less vibrant and less green. Amazing. It's just a wild totally. It's a really wild and amazing. It's so incredible. Salt is so magical. So in Netflix documentary version of so bad acid, hey, you get to visit as, I guess, for those who haven't seen it, I mean, visits the world and these like all these places to kind of represent these elements. And for salt, you visit the soy sauce factory. And I have heard you say that and you could see it, you cry like a baby. I wouldn't have said cry like a baby, but I thought what was so emotional about that place? Well, for me so much of it has to do like that soy sauce in particular. I also got very emotional in the Parmesan in the Parmesan factory. But and both of those foods are foods that have hundreds or even thousands of years of tradition being made the same way. There's so much knowledge. So the story of that soy sauce producer in particular is that it's one of the last remaining traditional soy sauce producers in Japan. And what makes it so exquisite is that it's aged for upwards of two years. Whereas, if you think of like Kiko Man or other industrially produced soy sauces, they're aged around three months maximum. So that time is, you know, and in any food that you're producing, time is often the most expensive ingredient. In addition to the two years of aging the soy sauce, this soy sauce is aged in these special barrels. These like huge wooden barrels that only one or two people are left in the world who know how to produce these barrels because they last close to 100 years. But as the industry has industrial, like become so much more industrial, the need for that knowledge and for those barrels has disappeared because Kiko Man just like an industrially produced soy sauce is just aged in stainless steel cask like in in the place. Yeah. So the wood for the barrels is harder to find the the knowledge of producing the barrels is harder to find. And the barrels are part of the taste, right? There's microbes in that specific type of wood from that place that affect the way that that tastes. So it's almost like I knew in that moment I was like getting to taste an endangered food, right? An endangered species. And Parmesan is not endangered thankfully. But like again, they're, you know, years of aging go into making a wheel of Parmesan, hundreds of gallons of milk go into one wheel of Parmesan. So it's just, it's like this massive amount of work and and like resources and time for one little bite. And that is what is so meaningful to me is like I love those things. I love that in my whole life, I love things that feel like the magic is sort of hidden a little bit. How do you make Parmesan cheese? What are you doing with all that milk? What are they doing? Well, it's all cheese. All cheese. This is one of those things that blows me. I love dairy so much. Like I, what's funny is my girlfriend's lactose intolerant. And I'm like, oh, god, I feel so bad. Like, like, but you know, when I was a young cook actually working at shape and use at this amazing restaurant, one of the things that really sort of took, blew me, blew me away was seeing these people, like these incredibly experienced cooks who literally knew how to make anything from scratch. And that sort of is is a little bit of like what became my ethic, right? Like how can I make this yellow cake from scratch, right? And so, but one of the things that they didn't make from scratch, it already kind of surprised me that they made it at all, but they didn't make it all away from scratch was mozzarella cheese. So we would, we would pull fresh mozzarella. We would get the curd from the local producer and then pull it into moths into fresh, the like balls that then we would slice and turn into like a braise salad or something else. And it is kind of this magic trick. It truly is like, it turns into this like rubbery texture and like it's very fun to make. I was like, well, this is amazing, but why aren't we starting with milk, right? Like we should be able to make, we should be able to make our own curd. Get the cow. Yeah, I was like, this is the house of made from scratch. Let's make this from scratch. Yeah. So God bless them. Like these, like this is, this is like one of those things where I'm like only at shapenese. I decided to take this on as my project. And I was, you know, probably 20 years old. I had no, Colin, I was, maybe they sometimes let me cut an onion. Like I had no culinary experience. I had no business doing this. This is also very early internet. This is like 99, 2000, you have to remember. Okay. So you couldn't, there was not, like there was not the internet where you could be like, how to make mozzarella curd from scratch. There was not that. Yes. So I had to look it up in books. I went to the UC Berkeley, like food and cookbook science library, like sort of looked this up in books. And I found out the basic steps. I called a few cheese makers who are friends of the restaurant. They all were like, do not do that. They were like, they were like, and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. It's so simple. It's just milk and rennet and a little acid. Like, of course, I can totally do it. And they're like, no, literally because it's so simple, it's one of the hardest, I want to hardest cheeses to make. Don't do it. So basically, this is all to say, I spent like an entire summer wasting like tens of thousands of gallons of cheese of milk. And an attempt to make mozzarella that like never, we're also because cheese, you have to have everything super sterile because it's, it's basically the whole point is like, it's bacteria growing temperatures. So you just have to make sure you're not growing the wrong bacteria, right? Like, and so, and so you can make people really sick in cheese making. People can die. So you have to sterilize everything, which is like, do not test trust a 20-year-old in an equipment restaurant kitchen to be making cheese that you want to eat. Yeah. But one of the things that I learned was, oh my God, like, I would start with a gallon of milk and end up with, I don't even know, eight ounces, maybe eight ounces of curd. Wow. So, um, after the success of salt, fat, acid, hate, I thought you would be living it up, Somanis, living your best life. Um, but in your new book, it wasn't, it wasn't, it hasn't been exactly like that. How have you been? No. I mean, I'm okay. I'm okay now. That's good. But, um, yeah, it was, you know, I was 38 when the book came out and when the , and I was 37 when the book came out, 38 when the show came out. Um, and I'd spent most of my life till then, much of my life, till then, being like quite sort of invisible in the world, right? Like, just had down doing my work, um, like sort of dying for acknowledgement for the hard work. And then I went from one extreme of like being very sort of under scene to then being like very over seen. Yeah. It's just that like, it, it kind of knocked me off kilter in a lot of ways. Yeah. And I had to, yeah, I, I, I like sunk pretty deep in depression. Yeah. You, you wrote that I'm like the sense of joy that you'd always found in cooking and eating no longer felt attainable. Yeah. Yeah. It was really, I, it was a very, um, you know, obviously during this time, it was also when there was COVID. Yeah. There was like, um, like, George Floyd murder and, but ultimately, and part of it had to do with my dad dying and like watching my dad, I'm sorry. Oh, thank you. I would just like watching this very complicated and kind of horrible person die a very sad, prolonged complicated death. And my dad was such a chaos agent and created so much pain for so many people. And his last months were really awful for a variety of reasons. But part of sort of the like, takeaway was that like, he was alone. You know what I mean? Like my brother and I were there with him as much as we could be. But like, there was, and we were just in the sea of chaos that he had created during this time. It was so horrible and uncomfortable for all of us, including him. And I was like, this is the worst way I could imagine for somebody to die. It's just so lonely and sad and pathetic. And I kind of had this moment of being like, you know, when I'm on my deathbed, I want to look back and know that I made a life that was full of beauty and joy and friendship. and connection and deliciousness and puppy dogs and gardens and you know art and so once he died I kind of was I think this is pretty common but I very much was sort of washed over with a sense of like you only live once you know what I mean like the sort of preciousness of time really sort of was like I could see it so clearly in that state of like grief was just like oh I've spent my whole life trying to be good and to do good and to win the affection of the people around me and I've had this sort of voice in the back of my head being like just put your head down do good do good do good like I'm investing in a good bank account so that one day I'll reach some sort of like balance from which I can withdraw and be happy you know and I was like oh there's no day right there's no there that you get to like I have to why am I making myself so miserable in the meantime the meantime is all there is like yeah like um and so I I think I sort of have just changed in as much as a person can change my policy about that of like oh I have to like even if I'm on deadline and I feel really bad about being behind which is all the time like I still have to take a break and go have watermelon in the park with my friends you know what I mean like I still have to have a little bit of joy every day and I still have an way that I can do that is this like simple act of cooking and that if I sort of understand if I sort of reorient my entire understanding of what's valuable in my in my life and that the ultimate most valuable thing is my time right the only thing I can't make more of the only thing I can't yeah produce more of is time that's actually the most precious currency I have and so my act of spending time for you or with you or on you is the most beautiful gift I can give you and vice versa right you know it's not like oh I'm just trying to make the world the best lasagna it's like I'm thinking about the person who asked me to make lasagna for their birthday while I make this and I'm like putting all of that energy into this thing that takes sometimes two days to make right so that when you eat it you feel like I spent two days of my precious time on you and happily right in your book in your new book in good things um it's filled with obviously fabulous recipes and these sort of bigger tips about like just living a happier life I think um but also a bunch of fun facts about fun science facts about oh yeah excuse it I like I have to get to be able to show better talk about science um uh but so can you tell me one of the um things you mentioned is that you need to bring eggs to room temperature before baking them why is that oh yeah well it's oh that's such a good question I look it's just such a simple question it's so good because it isn't almost every baking recipe make sure your eggs are at room temperature right and just like I was saying about butter having like very specific qualities at different temperatures eggs due to and also it's it's not that it's not even so much necessarily that an egg at room temperature will whip better than a cold egg even though it will like a a room temperature egg white will hold air more readily than a cold one okay but often in baking what you're doing is you're combining different ingredients like with an egg into a cake batter say what you're doing is you have your soft butter that maybe you've creamed with your sugar or whatever or reverse creamed or whatever and then you're gonna add eggs into that and you often you do one egg at a time let it mix in at the next egg or even sometimes more like you even do it more gradually where you're just adding you're dribbling the egg in and that's because you are trying to keep an emotion for you know you're trying to have this cake batter or mixture cookie dough or whatever come together into a unified texture and a unified mixture and if things are vastly different temperatures they're gonna they're not gonna come together as readily like right and if that if if you're adding a cold thing into a warm thing they're kind of gonna reject each other a little bit right you want everything to be similar temperature on a sort of different note but fridge related um you right the refrigeration destroys a tomato's delicate flavor yes it is true it does destroy the delicate tomato flavor when I was a baby cook somebody told me they I feel like they had a fringe magnet that said like I think it said that like refrigeration destroy I think it I think I was quoting the fringe magnet but uh but um it's part basically tomatoes are very delicate and this goes back to those aromatic molecules and um the and also a tomato like many other things is sensitive to temperature what a fridge it does to vegetables is it slows down the decay essentially right like a vegetable from the moment it's picked is dying right so and so uh and also a lot of things are happening chemically inside those vegetables like for example I think many of us have heard is um with corn sweet corn for example like it's the freshest the moment it's pick it's the sweetest the moment it's picked and that's totally true like I I people I know who grew up in the Midwest where they grow a lot of corn you know the grandma would put on the pot of water to bring it to a boil before sending the kids out into the yard to pick the corn because she's like it has to go straight from the picking into the pot and grandma was right because what you're doing when you pick a vegetable is like the minute you pick it it's innate sugars start transforming into starches so like if you've had starchy corn you know that's like kind of like dry and starchy that's probably because it's old or it could be the variety but if it's supposed to be like corn on the cob it's the sweetest the moments pick that's why you want to eat the corn like the day you bring it home from the farmer's market if you can and so the same is true for a tomato tomatoes ripen slightly differently but still you want to pick them at the peak of their sugars and putting them in the fridge what it's going to do to a tomato's texture is it's going to start degrading the cells and the cells will become like the texture of the tomato will start to become mealy like you see your face you're so disgusted yeah it's so gross and you'll lose a lot of those and you'll lose a lot of those like aromatic molecules which are what makes a tomato have such sort of vibrant fresh flavor so I really I don't put tomatoes in the fridge I always leave them out a room temperature yeah you you spend a lot of time thinking about food systems and how we get food to how all that food ends up in our supermarket it's so interesting sometimes you find out the craziest things yeah yeah so like on on your plate you can see sort of the effects of sociopolitical conflict of like economic sanctions of and you can taste the changes that happen with these so for example cinnamon is I think a really great example so until about I would say the mid 1900s in this country in the US our predominant source or our main source of cinnamon was Vietnam and the cinnamon grown in Vietnam is is sweet like when you taste a piece of cinnamon bark it tastes sweet on your tongue it also is very high in the like um the oils like the cinnamon oils that are kind of make it taste spicy so if you've ever had like red hot gum or red hot candies or big red gum yes like that taste of that very spicy sort of cinnamon that red like that that is what I'm talking about right but if I if I told you to picture cinnamon you wouldn't think of red hot gum you would think of apple pie or cinnamon apple cider donuts or something yes which is a totally different kind of cinnamon and that cinnamon comes um historically from Mexico or India but and and it has just a completely different sort of like molecular makeup and a different spice profile it's much less spicy and more sort of soft softly flavored that's if you want to picture the difference between like I said apple pie and big red gum yeah right those things are both cinnamon but totally different kinds of cinnamon and so until like mid 1900s basically everyone here like our experience of cinnamon was this Vietnamese very sweet very spicy cinnamon and then when the Vietnam war happened and there were sanctions the economic sanctions um posed on all goods coming here from Vietnam from like this I think late 60s until the late 90s when Bill Clinton was president there were nothing from Vietnam could enter this country so so the an entire you know generation and a half of people their experience of cinnamon shifted into like Indian Mexican Chinese cinnamon and so like that in that that taste of that big red whatever felt and that and I fall into that group right I was born 79 yes and then one day like and I can't remember when it was probably 2002 2003 someone gave me a piece of Vietnamese cinnamon bark like I'd never had it before and it's so good that I now only use Vietnamese cinnamon like I always look for it and at this point you can find it like I got you can get it at Costco you can get it at Whole Foods you just look for it's called Vietnamese or Saigon cinnamon but it is this way where you know it tells the the story, right? This like taste, and this simple ingredient tells this crazy like global story. And then, um, why have vanilla beans so expensive? Oh my god. Vanilla beans are so crazy. So, um, I, I, at one point I was staying in the like, uh, near of the Palm Desert. And I somehow somebody was like, you gotta go visit this orchid greenhouse. They're so amazing. I wasn't a lot for me to do in Palm Desert. So I was like, I'll go visit the orchid greenhouse. So I went to the orchid greenhouse and I saw all the different types of orchids. I'm not like a major orchid nerd, but it was still pretty cool. Yeah. They're very sexy. They're very, I feel like I'm looking at one, you know, totally. It's amazing. And at the very end of the tour, they were like, I was like, oh, what's that thing? And there was this one sort of plant that was like this crazy vining trailing plant. And they're like, oh, that's vanilla. And I was like, what? And they're like, vanilla bean, I was like, vanilla is an orchid. And they're like, yes. And so vanilla is an orchid plant. Or vanilla is the seed pod from an orchid plant. And it takes almost a year for a vanilla bean to mature on the plant. And in that year, when the plant flowers, it's so finicky that on a vanilla farm, a human has to go and hand pollinate each flower to ensure that like enough vanilla will be produced because there's, I think something like a three day window for that flower to be pollinated. So if they were left to the bees and nature, you know, probably you would get much, a much smaller yield of vanilla. So for one thing, like that step already is so sort of you got humans literally, you got humans hand pollinating, but also in this very small time window, right? So you have to get that right. And then you have to wait however many months, I think, I think it's upward of eight months for the seed pod to ripen. And then they're picked. And then there's a multi-step basically process fermentation process because when they're picked, it's not the pod, it's not the vanilla bean that we know. It's still not usable. So it has to go through a multi-step sort of drying and fermentation process to become the fragrant pod that we know. So when you understand that and then layer on to that, a whole other understanding that these places where vanilla is endemic are among the most vulnerable to climate disaster, like you start to learn, oh, right? Like wow, this is an incredible treasure for humankind that actually is on the verge of extinction. And, you know, it can only grow in this very limited climate. And if we do not protect those climates, those people who live there, the plants, then we will lose this. And we will likely lose vanilla, probably not in my lifetime, but probably in the next generations lifetime. Like there, it will probably not. Vanilla, chocolate, coffee, like bananas, there are a lot of foods that we sort of don't think about that are not long for this world. When you look at the food trends out there, you know, whether it's soy lent or robots, the serving is food. Oh my god. The various diets, carrot, carnival. Oh my god. What terrifies you the most? Oh my god. What terrifies me? I'm like anxious. All the things you just listed make me so anxious. Oh god. I mean, I think what really, this isn't really a trend, but I think what I'm going to turn the, sorry, I'm not going to answer your question. I'm going to turn it inside out. Great. I feel so protective of the people who grow, produce and make our food that we get to eat. They're such unglamorous, it's such unglamorous work. It's such low-paying work in general. Across culture is across country is across populations. And also it's this, right, like food is this thing that gets valorized in TV shows, like the bear and top chef and whatever, but they're in this country in particular, there is such a flawed system for food production that serves really just a few large interests at the cost of the environment, at the cost of the people who produce the food. And so there is just this kind of way where we, as a population, have been trained to expect our food to be very cheap. And I say that understanding we're like on the brink of a recession and a lot of people face, like, sort of economic precarity in their lives. So I'm not necessarily out here saying everything should be more expensive, but I am saying like, it's kind of just built in that we expect that we should be able to go get a taco for this much, a burger for this much, you know, and it should be cheap. But when you sort of take a step back and think about it, you're like, how are the people, the many people who worked on producing this thing to get it to us, making a living and, you know, paying for their basic needs. And I worked in kind of the fanciest restaurants, restaurant in America for a while. And like, you know, I did not achieve financial stability in my own life until I had like a miracle situation and sold a book and had a Netflix show, right? Like I was existed in economic precarity as well, totally. But like in this moment that we live in in this like late capitalism, like everything at the touch of a button available to us, everything so digitized and separate. And we're so removed from the process of making and like having anything made for us. I really believe like food and restaurants are kind of one of the last vestiges in our daily lives of having an experience of something be handmade for you, right? Like, and having this like human to human, like somebody I made this for you. That doesn't happen anymore, like with so many of the goods in our life, right? Like we're so, you don't meet the person who made your shoes or your clothes or your headphones, right? But you are a room apart from the person who made you this plate of food. Sometimes they're the handing it to you. And so it is kind of this like incredibly valuable and beautiful thing that we still have like a little bit of access to in our lives. And I'm just so sad that every force in our lives and in the world is sort of hellbent on eradicating even that from from us and and letting us appreciate it. And I don't know there's no solution that I know. You know, I don't know that there's an answer. I'm not criticizing anyone for buying or eating any food. I just kind of breaks my heart. Yeah. Yeah. It's real depressing note. All right. Well, we can't end there. We can't end there. Yeah. How that we end. We end here. Why is spaghetti the very last place a meatball belongs? It's so funny. It really is. My editor was like, we had this in my question. She was like, you asked that question, Wendy. It's very important. Well, and I say that quoting the song on top of spaghetti. I'll cover with cheese, right? Like, like, I'm just like, no, no. Have you ever had a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs? Have you ever had one at our house? We actually do it with macaroni. It's macaroni. Well, there we go. Because so already you're making a better choice. My mom will be very happy. It's a grandma's recipe. Okay. Okay. Spaghetti is an insane choice of shape to eat with a meatball. For one thing, a meatball is like this huge thing. You have to sort of break it down. Spaghetti is as long. Whatever. You're never going to get the right amount of meatball on the fork with the right amount of spaghetti. It's, it's like, it's bad. So either like, I'm like, if you're going to do pasta, choose a different shape. That's like more amenable. Where like the stabbing works for, you know what I mean? Like, and or, or like, eat it on a bowl of polenta. Eat it with some grilled bread. Do something else with your time. Like, I'm eating meatball sandwich. But not on the spaghetti. Please relate for me. Because also you're like, you're like, you have a whole bowl of spaghetti and then what you have three meatballs on. It just looks wrong. You're like, I don't know. All right, Lightning round. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Hit me. Lightning round of oddball questions. What is the most dangerous thing you've done for a book? I don't know. Oh my god. I feel the pressure of the lightning. And I don't have an answer for you right now. I mean, I do all sorts of dangerous things that I would never recommend. And, and I mean, I've probably eaten, you know what I've probably done that's the most. What? Eating the cheese that you tried to cook. So I've definitely had stuff where I'm like, is this salad dressing still a good three and a half months later? No, try it. Why not? Like, I think I've definitely taken my life into my own hands eating like potentially rotten food, but also I'm still here so it's fine. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. All right, finish this sentence. Now that I know blank, I'll never look at my blank the same way again. Oh, I mean, I think now that I know how long it takes to make a vanilla bean. I'll never look at a vanilla bean in the same way again. Yeah. Funnest object sitting in your house. Oh, oh, oh, oh, my friend gave me, my friend gave me the coolest thing. It's a set of like Russian style dolls, but instead of being Russian like dolls, they're vegetables. So like, it's like a broccoli and then a bok toi and then like, I can't remember with them. Oh, an artichoke and then a cucumber and then a pea pod and then the peas. Oh, that's so cute. It's so cool. It's like hand-painted wood. It's so beautiful. Yeah. Oh, what a joy. Biggest mistake you've made while cooking. Oh, I mean, they're million to choose from, but I mean, there was one time. I don't know. Is this kind of a mistake? Well, yeah, it is a mistake. I was in a rush and I chose to, I like very consciously chose to use not the safest knife for cutting into a butternut squash because the knife, what I, in the restaurant where I worked, I always had a two handled knife, which is what the knife you use when you cut into a wheel of Parmesan or anything sort of unwieldy because that way you're seasawing your way into it instead of jamming a knife in that could slip out and injure you. So our, for some reason, our large two handled knife had gone missing for a few days, which is a very weird. And so I was too, and I had even made a mental note, like get a new one of those before someone hurt some cells. But then I was in a rush and I just, instead of choosing the next safest knife, which would have been a very big one, I just grabbed the closest one, which was little, and I went into my butternut squash and I stabbed myself in the hand and I had enough surgery. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. No, but, yeah, it was very intense. I truly, yeah, I was very intense. Wow. That was a big mistake. Is it true? Because I did it. I had to go to emergency for trying to cut a bagel with. Oh, yeah. And. I've heard the bagel in the avocado are two of the most, I knew a hand surgeon and he said bagels in avocados were like the two of the most sort of common injuries that brought people to hand surgery. Thank you so much. So many things. Oh, thank you. So lovely. You're so great. Thank you. Thank you. It's so. Yeah. I really appreciate your time and your work and your new book and it's really great. Thank you. I definitely was like, "Am I the science or am I the versus?" Because I'm not a scientist. Ah. You're just. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Nice talking to you. I love when it took me. That was the award-winning cook, Simee Nosrat. Her new book is called Good Things. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time. [music]