Welcome to Food Friends, a podcast inspiring home cooks to try new dishes in the kitchen by sharing trusted recipes, tips, and friendship. Hi, I'm Sonia. And I'm Keri. We met in Los Angeles over 15 years ago as personal chefs and haven't stopped talking about food since. We're so glad you're here. Hi, Sonia. Hi, Keri. Sonia, what was your best bite this week? Harry, it was a cookbook club. Oh, goodness. I can't wait. Cookbook club met and we cooked from the Zuni Cafe cookbook by Judy Rogers, which is kind of I feel like this classic iconic cookbook iconic among cookbook lovers. Did you own the cookbook? I did. But I have to be honest, I never cooked from it. But this gave me the opportunity to not just cook through it, but to really sit with it. For one, I have to tell you, it's a pretty amazing book, but it's also a snapshot of a time and place. It was written in the early aughts. It's really a seasonal cookbook. Her restaurant, Zuni Cafe, still exists. She unfortunately passed away a few years ago. And it's just so interesting to look through the book, to really cook from the book in a way you almost have to live in California. Because there are a lot of recipes that are very specific to the ingredients that you can find there. Well, will you remind me too, is it Zuni Cafe was in San Francisco? It's Northern California, right? I mean, I'm mildly familiar with it. I don't own it. I've never cooked from it. I know that she's sort of famous for this chicken bread salad, roasted chicken with bread and greens. But when you said 2000s, I was like, oh, I thought it was more like the 80s. I had a sense of time and place just kind of recognizing that her voice was very important in the food world. Yeah, I don't know when the restaurant opened, but this is when the cookbook came out. So obviously it existed a little bit before then. But I have been to Zuni Cafe and it is a really special place. It's in this triangular building on a corner. It's so charming and welcoming and the food is really incredible. And they are known for their roast chicken dish, which famously took a long time to get to your table, but was kind of worth the wait. and it comes with this salad with croutons that are sort of cooked in that chicken fat like schmaltzy chicken yeah so we knew if we were going to do the zuni cafe cookbook for cookbook club someone had to make the chicken recipe and i do think that was actually my best bite of the week was the chicken and adrian hale who's our friend is part of my cookbook club she's our friend who has that great sourdough recipe she was like i will make the chicken she was also hosting but only if another person helps me because it's like a three or four page recipe and another person in the group emily park had made this recipe multiple times and she actually has a bullet pointed version that she created for herself to simplify the process because it's hard to look through all the pages so i'm saying all this because it really feels like a recipe from another time i wouldn't say this is the book for people who want easy weeknight recipes or uncomplicated or even just like a newer cook. It sounds like if a seasoned cook needs a bullet pointed list on how to make a roast chicken, then it's probably kind of fussy. But there are some takeaways I want to share. For one, I feel like one of the things about this cookbook that's incredible is not actually the recipes, but the introduction and the head notes and all the details that she offers. If you are a beginner cook, there are invaluable lessons here for a beginner or an expert. Like she really got me thinking about different techniques and ways to use vegetables and ways to make pastry that I hadn't been thinking about before so I think it's worth checking out from your library because there's a wealth of information and it can tell why it's a classic. The other takeaway from the book that we all collectively agreed on and I think Adrian really vocalized this was essentially any protein you have benefits from being salted in advance and the thing that makes the Zuni chicken so extraordinary is that you're salting it two or three days before you roast it. Is that an investment of time? Is that realistic for every home cook? Absolutely not. But it made me realize like my turkey. Very simple step though. It's a super simple step and it made me think about how when I started dry brining my turkey, it completely changed my end result of my turkey. And it's the same idea. It's a dry brine of a chicken. You take your chicken out of the package, you pat it dry, you season it inside and out with salt, and then you put it on a dish and you put it in your fridge. Adrienne didn't have enough space in her fridge. to even let it air dry so that doesn't even feel like the most important part if you take nothing else away from this book it's salt your chicken at least a day before you roast it and it will turn out so much more flavorful and so much more tender we couldn't get over it then that beautiful crouton salad with chicories or escarole or radicchio to put that chicken on is just heaven It really good So I do think the Zuni Chicken Cafe I link a recipe you can find online If you're looking for your next great roast chicken and you are interested in a little bit more time and care, it is worth the effort. It pays off. Sonia, if you were not the one who made the Zuni Chicken recipe, what recipe did you make? I'm dying to know. Okay, I made a very carry recipe. I was channeling you for this. We have a spreadsheet for the cookbook club where everyone puts in the dish they want to make. And we were also that same weekend, our cookbook club has been organizing a bake sale. So we had kind of as a group decided like some people were just going to make simpler recipes. And so I knew there were going to be like a lot of vegetable sides. And I was like, okay, maybe I should bring a starch, you know, because I was sort of deciding late. And so I saw this recipe. And once I saw it, I knew I had to make it because of you. So the recipe is called pasta with spicy broccoli and cauliflower. Pasta with spicy broccoli and cauliflower. Okay, I need to know more. Right? If you saw this, wouldn't you be like, I'm going to make that? I would say I'm going to make that. And also, what does this involve? What kind of pasta? What is your sauce? Is there cheese? Is it baked? Tell me all the things. It's not baked. It's not creamy. It involves a ton of broccoli and cauliflower. It's not that hard. I wouldn't say it's a 30-minute pasta, but it's definitely not a whole day pasta. It's not four pages in a bulleted list. It's not. it's definitely not four pages so one thing you do do is you toast your breadcrumbs and she kind of tells you just like rip apart bread it's a sort of large breadcrumbs and then you drizzle them with olive oil and stick them in your oven and toast them and while they're toasting you cut up your cauliflower and broccoli i am gonna link a recipe and i've seen people online make this with just cauliflower so you could also go that route if you're like i don't want to deal with broccoli i just want cauliflower that's fine it's a tremendous amount so what she it's all about technique so your breadcrumbs you toast them you pull them out after you've cut up your broccoli and your cauliflower you're cutting them really thin i think she says an eighth of an inch thin some pieces have like little stems on them some become crumbly she tells you that's all part of it and then you get like a quarter cup of olive oil in a big pan so it's a lot of olive oil and you heat it up and you start throwing in your cauliflower and your broccoli now she tells you to add it all in at once and don't move it essentially so it can start to brown i found it was way too much vegetable to add all at once and i knew it was just going to steam i or at least i was afraid it was so i personally cooked it in two batches i don't know if you have to do that and basically you're trying to move it as little as possible so that some pieces get brown some pieces just get tender and after it's brown then you season it with salt and then you also and this is where all the flavor that's an important tip i think that you're not salting it right when you put it in the pan you're letting it get really browned first that's right and so that's one of the things i love about this cookbook each recipe has such important technique insights so then she tells you like once your vegetables are cooked that's when you put your pasta into your boiling water so now you have nine to ten minutes and she calls for i think penne or something like that but she offers other no penne at your house no penne at our house because jonathan does not like penne Jonathan does not like penne. So I used fusilli, which is a great thing for this. It's that sort of corkscrew. So all the little pieces land inside it. Okay, so then while your pasta is simmering, this is where you add all the flavor to your vegetables. You add a ton of chopped anchovy, garlic, fennel seed, and chili flake, which are quite Italian classic flavors. But that fennel seed adds such a nice touch. I actually added a little extra fennel seed to mine because I really liked it. and then you just stir it and you cook off that garlic a little bit and you mellow it out and at the end you add chopped olives and parsley so it's even more salty flavor and actually the recipe calls for zero cheese but if you want parmesan it totally goes you can completely decide to grate some parmesan in the end oh and there's also capers i forgot to mention chopped capers chopped anchovies chopped garlic fennel seed chili parsley that's where you're getting all the dynamic sauce elements of this, but it's not really a sauce. And then you add your pasta to those veggies, you toss it all together, and you serve it topped with the crunchy croutons. I mean, there are so many things that I love about this. I love veggie pasta. And I think people are always looking for easily accessible ingredients like broccoli and cauliflower into an exciting dish. And by adding all of those sort of salty ingredients like capers, like anchovies, unless you're vegan, I would definitely not skip the anchovies. It does not taste fishy. It tastes very salty very flavorful And you going to need that flavor because on its own it could be bland without that I do think you can skip the olives though if you have a person in your life who just hates olives i didn think that was essential i was a little nervous to make it for cookbook club because i had to make it at home and bring it and so you're worried is it gonna transfer yeah is it gonna get too soft one of the other people in cookbook club laura was like sonia i want to make pasta but i was nervous too and then she and i both were like you know what it held up pretty good because even though it was just lightly warm. It was almost like a really delightful warm pasta salad, if that makes sense. It sounds like it's a good, actually a great buffet dish that you could make and just kind of set out and you serve it at room temperature. I think to your point about the technique, I think what's really interesting is that you're really cooking all that broccoli and cauliflower. You're focusing on getting the flavor out of the vegetable and then you're adding all that flavor back in with all those salty elements. You actually don't need the salt at the beginning of the recipe. I think this idea of really focusing on that browning is the smart version of doing it. Yeah. And just a few last shout outs to the cookbook club dishes on the table. Because one thing that was very clear is when you cook from this cookbook, the things go together. They just worked. It was kind of magical. It was surprising because not every cookbook club works like that. And there was something about this one that particularly did. Someone made a gorgeous citrus salad with fresh greens that just really lightened the plate up. But there was one other surprise hit that really shocked me. This woman, Santa, made this mushroom salad, which I would not have thought to make. And the original recipe calls for portobello mushrooms, which also felt kind of of a different time. You don't see many. That feels very 80s to me. But she made them with baby bell mushrooms, which is really the same mushroom. and it's shaved very thinly sliced mushrooms with creme fraiche and a little Meyer lemon squeezed over an olive oil. A shaved mushroom salad doesn't sound necessarily exciting or even that amazing. It was unbelievable. It was so good. I was like this I'm making again for sure. That really changes the way I think about a mushroom salad because I sort of have like a love-hay relationship with Meyer Lemon. Just your endorsement of that idea is really interesting. And I think that seeing the food world through one person's eyes is a really beautiful thing to do. Yeah. And I think I always like learning why a cookbook becomes a classic. And this really is. And so I didn't fully understand it until I got to try a couple dishes at once. So it was really fun. So Carrie, what was your best bite of the week? Well, Sonia, this will probably not surprise you, but nachos were my best bite of the week. It really started with going to the Laker game, and we had nachos at the game. We had a version of nachos that I don't usually have, which is nachos with a very creamy cheese sauce. Like a queso-y kind of sauce. Like a queso-y kind of sauce. James and I shared it for dinner. Mac kept, you know, stealing. He had a burger, but he was stealing nachos from us. And it was like a really fun dinner. And it really inspired us to also have nachos for Mac's birthday. So I had two nacho moments in the last week that were really incredible. One was at the Laker game, and then one was in my own kitchen. And I made a big platter of nachos for us. And so I want to tell you what I put on my nachos that made them really different, but also so delicious. We like to layer cheese, like shredded cheddar. We usually do a mix of like shredded sharp cheddar, shredded Monterey Jack. I also had some queso fresco. So I added a little bit of that to the mix. But what I did is I actually did kind of like two layers and I do two different chips too. So I had corn tortilla chips. I like to use a thicker chip because it really holds up a lot better. What brand? I need to know exactly what brand. Well, this time I used a brand called, I think they're called Chica's. It's a thicker chip. A Tostito can be a little bit too thin and crunchy. And so it doesn't really hold all of those toppings, which we like a lot of toppings on our nachos. So the other thing that I mixed in were Fritos. Really? Yes. Because I love that corny flavor. And usually Fritos are kind of in a scoop shape. And so they really do hold the ingredients. So the bottom of my sheet pan was a mixture of a triangle tortilla chip and then a scoopy shaped Frito chip. And then I layered that with cheese and I added a little bit of, I had some black beans from a can that I drained. I dried out a little bit. I added a few of those on top. I have a spice mixture from burlap and barrel that is a Mexican blend of sorts. And so I just sprinkled a little bit of that on. And then I did another layer of chips both tortilla chips and Fritos and another layer of cheese And then I had also made some ground beef with some taco seasonings you know cumin coriander I used a wahio chili powder, a little bit of onion in that a little bit of tomato paste, I made it a little bit saucy. And then I had sort of little piles of ground beef, a few more of those black beans. And then I stuck that all into a really hot oven and let it all melt down together. I think of you as someone who excels at nachos. I feel like this is one of your areas of expertise. And you have made me incredible nachos before. You've also made me your famous potato nachos, where you slice thin potatoes, roast them, and layer them with different ingredients. And you always seem to include black beans, which I love. I love that you include them in your nachos. I like a black bean. Although So Mac really, he also advocates for like a pinto. He's so wrong. Or if we have refried beans, we will add some of those in there too, which adds a lot of creaminess. And there's actually something I completely forgot to mention that I also did was I had roasted broccoli. I was going to ask because you usually add broccoli. I usually do. I usually add broccoli or cauliflower. I had a couple heads of broccoli. I cut those up very thinly, almost the way that you were just describing the broccoli for your pasta dish. very, very thin, and I got it really crispy. And then that actually went on that bottom layer because I didn't want sauciness on the bottom because I didn't want it to get too soft. And then when all of that came out, I added some thinly sliced radish. I added a little bit of cilantro. I think I had some scallions. I threw that in. And then we had some salsa on the side and we had a little bit of just mashed avocado on the side too. My other question was about how long did it take you to make this? Because it actually sounds pretty quick. I think it's maybe a 30-ish minute meal. It could actually take a lot less if you didn't use broccoli or if you didn't take the time to roast that. So that's really where I started. And once the broccoli was in the oven, then I could brown the beef. My husband and I, James and I, were working in the kitchen together at the same time. So I asked him to shred all the cheese, which I think is worth it. I think people like to buy shredded cheese. I generally don't because I don't use a ton of cheese. So I like to freshly grate it when I need it. And I actually think in this kind of application, it makes a big difference if you grate your own cheese. And I think you also need to use a mix of cheeses. Yeah, it sounds amazing. And it sounds like such a fun way to have dinner just on any random night. It just sounds so fresh and also so rich. And also all the different textures are just so welcome. Yeah. And I also think of nachos. I mean, it's a request that comes from my family a lot, but nachos were for us really born out of this. How do we use up what we have in our produce drawer? And I think that's part of where the potato nachos came from. But I think just a way to kind of have this fun meal that's on a sheet pan, but that also has a lot of vegetables and whatever protein you want. I mean, there have been times where I've crumbled up tofu and seasoned that similarly to ground beef. I'm seriously craving nachos now. Well, as always, this has been so fun. I love talking about cookbook club and hearing your updates. I love hearing about your inspirations for dinner. It always comes from somewhere fun. Well, until next time. Until next time. Bye. Bye. Do you ever find yourself talking back to the podcast or sitting on a recipe you're dying to share with us? Or do you have a cooking question you wish you could actually get answered in real time right away. If you ever wished you could join the conversation instead of just listening, this is for you. We're excited to announce our new monthly hang around the table with food friends, live Q and a once a month, we'll gather live on zoom for an interactive version of the podcast, a space to connect with fellow home cooks, ask both of us, your burning food questions and talk through the real hurdles that come up in everyday kitchens. You'll leave with new ideas for what to cook next and the reassurance that you're not figuring it out all alone. This is about more than recipes. It's about connection, community, and making home cooking feel easier and more fun. If you've ever wanted to join the conversation, this is your invitation. Join us at the table by becoming a paid Substack subscriber for $5 a month or $55 a year. You'll find the link to subscribe in the show notes or at foodfriendspodcast.substack.com. We can't wait for you to pull up a chair and join us. Thanks for being our food friend. If you enjoyed our podcast, please subscribe, leave us a review and share this episode with friends. We love hearing from you. So follow us on Instagram or drop us a line at foodfriendspodcast.com. Yes, we'd love to hear from you and your food friends. Happy cooking and eating.
