Recently on Salt + Spine 🎙: Ruth Reichl + More
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Recently on Salt + Spine…
Check out some recent episodes of Salt + Spine – along with featured recipes – below. From Ruth Reichl to Andrea Nguyen, every week we #TalkCookbooks with some of your favorite authors.
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EPISODE 40 • MAY 6, 2019
“Cookbooks are inspirational. If you're going to give a dinner party, you lie in bed at night and … start flipping through cookbooks looking for ideas.”
RECIPE
Start cooking from Save Me The Plums today:
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Omnivore Books | IndieBound
Also available at:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble
EPISODE 39 • APRIL 30, 2019
“When I'm traveling, I like to go to grocery stores. So when I travel for work–or if I'm in a foreign country–I get such a kick out of that.”
RECIPE
Pan-fried chicken thighs with Italian salsa
by Carla Lalli Music
Chicken thighs are the best—juicy, flavorful, and crowned with a generous swath of skin that gets fantastically crisp. There’s just one problem: Grocers sell thighs either bone-in and skin-on, or boneless, skinless.
The ideal situation, in my book, is boneless and skin-on, and until the rest of the world catches on, we have to do it ourselves. Quick cooking plus crisp skin—worth it.
RECIPE
Green-estrone
by Carla Lalli Music
This is spring’s answer to minestrone, and a place to put all of the very early season’s green things that arrive when the weather is still a little chilly in the shade.
I purposely combine longer-cooked vegetables with vibrant, barely cooked greens and herbs for a mix of sweet and bright notes.
Start cooking from Where Cooking Begins today:
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Omnivore Books | IndieBound
Also available at:
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EPISODE 38 • APRIL 16, 2019
“Often people say to me: ‘How can you tell a good cookbook when you see it?’ I say, ‘Well, look at it. Does the author talk about how they came up with the recipe?’”
RECIPE
Swedish Chocolate-Oatmeal Cookies
(Galettes suédoises à l’avoine)
by David Lebovitz
The one thing that might get me to go back to Ikea—someday—are the Havreflarn: crisp oatmeal cookies with dark chocolate sandwiched in between them. But to avoid going back any more than I have to, I wanted to make them at home. I searched around for a recipe and found one at Cuisine de Bérnard, the blog of French cookbook author Bérnard Laurence, who said he had tested the recipe dozens of times. His conclusion was that margarine worked better than butter. So, like remodeling an apartment in Paris, I experienced another first: I bought margarine.
Start cooking from L’APPART: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home today:
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Omnivore Books | IndieBound
Also available at:
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EPISODE 37 • APRIL 9, 2019
“I really felt that it was my responsibility—as an outsider having seen and heard all the things that I had when traveling through the region—to really give an honest portrayal of what life is like there.”
RECIPE
Mussakhan (Roast chicken with sumac and red onions)
by Yasmin Khan
Mussakhan is a classic Palestinian dish eaten in villages throughout the region. Traditionally the meat is laid out on a giant piece of bread with the flavorsome roasting juices poured over it, so that they seep into the dough. This platter is then placed on the table for everyone to pull off sections of bread and chicken: a wonderful sharing meal. As it can be challenging to find such large pieces of flatbread in most shops, I’ve suggested using individual naan breads instead… but, of course, if you can, seek out traditional sheets of Arabic taboon bread from Middle Eastern stores. If you are avoiding gluten, the chicken is just as delicious on its own, or served with rice or a salad.
Start cooking from Zaitoun: Recipes from the Palestinian Kitchen today:
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IndieBound
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EPISODE 36 • APRIL 2, 2019
“I would read Vietnamese cookbooks that were coming out in the ‘80s and I'd be like ‘That is not the kind of food that my family makes’ and ‘Why are they using olive oil in that recipe?’ and ‘Why don't they tell the story of Vietnamese refugees in this country?’ ”
RECIPE
Char Siu Chicken
by Andrea Nguyen
Savory-sweet and garlicky Chinese barbecued pork, called char siu in Cantonese and xá xíu in Vietnamese, is hard to resist. Since the classic porky version requires a good hour (better yet, overnight) to marinate, my weeknight approach is to make it with chicken thighs and grill it for a wonderful old-school flavor. You can use a stove-top grill pan as suggested here, or prepare a medium charcoal fire or preheat a gas grill to medium and cook the chicken for 10 to 12 minutes, basting during the last 3 minutes. Enjoy char siu chicken for dinner with rice and a quick stir-fried vegetable or a salad. Use leftovers (or make a double batch) for banh mi, a noodle soup, or fried rice.
RECIPE
Cashew Sesame Brittle
by Andrea Nguyen
Nut and seed brittles are a popular Vietnamese sweet, sold at bakeries and even airports. When I hanker for some, I make a small, fast batch to ensure its freshness. A candy thermometer doesn’t work well with such a modest quantity. Instead, I carefully monitor the sugar syrup (no texting!) during the 10 minutes of cooking. My brittle has always turned out great, and I’ve become a better cook too.
Cashew halves and pieces lay flat and look handsome in brittle. The recipe calls for raw nuts and seeds, which yield nuanced flavor; if you use roasted ones, cut back on the final cooking a tad to avoid a burnt flavor.
Start cooking from Vietnamese Food Any Day today:
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Omnivore Books | IndieBound
Also available at:
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