Padma Lakshmi Does Standup

Hey, Christopher Kimball here. Join us live on March 11th, 8 a.m. Eastern. I'll be kicking off my first live stream on Substack. I'll be joined by Paris-dwelling pastry chef and author David Leibovitz to discuss the state of food writing, get the real scoop on what's going on in Paris, and talk about our likes and dislikes. Please subscribe at ChristopherKimball.Substack.com and join us live on March 11th at 8 a.m. Eastern. Again, subscribe at ChristopherKimball.Substack.com and I really hope that you join us live. This is Milk Street Radio from PRX and I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. After 17 years on Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi unlocked the secret to being a great TV host. A lot of it is just being a good host like you would at a dinner party. Make sure the food comes out at the right time. Make sure everybody meets everybody. Everybody gets to talk. But now she's ready to take on new challenges, like creating a whole new culinary competition show. I wanted to do things differently because I thought that my genre of competitive cooking needed a refresh. And she's doing stand-up comedy. It's excruciating and exhilarating, but mostly excruciating. The evolution of Padma Lakshmi, that's coming up later in the show. But first, I'm joined by Elise Inamine. She wrote the cookbook For the Love of Kewpie to celebrate 100 years of the cult favorite mayonnaise. Elise, welcome to Milk Street. Thanks for having me. So let's just start with an obvious question, which is what is Kewpie? What is it made out of? Yes, so Kewpie is a Japanese mayonnaise made out of entirely egg yolks as opposed to whole eggs, which makes it a lot richer and creamier. and in some formulations it has MSG which gives it like a nice umami flavor. It's also tastes sweeter to me right? Yes. Regular mayonnaise. I think so. I feel like to me Kewpie tastes like a more intense mayo compared to other mayos. Like I feel like a lot of mayos are sort of just like a background ingredient but I feel like whenever I add Kewpie to something I know it's there. I don't know it just goes with everything too. So let's talk a little bit about the founder he goes to a canned seafood manufacturer in the U.S. and he notices they use mayonnaise in a number of dishes. So was mayonnaise something that existed in Japan already and then he came up with this version of it or was mayonnaise something that was really not part of the repertoire? At that point, this is in the like 1910s, 10s, mayonnaise was not really part of the Japanese culinary repertoire. And actually, when the founder of Kewpie started making Kewpie and then trying to get grocery stores to sell it, people were getting confused. Like regular customers were not sure if it was hair oil. So it was just a product that was unfamiliar to Japanese people at that time. And maybe it actually made a good hair oil too. Maybe. We'll never know. Or maybe we do. I'm not sure. But it was really funny to research how The founder of Kewpie, Toichiro Nakashima, got into making mayonnaise. I mean, when he went to America to understand the seafood canning industry, that's when he tried mayo, like you were saying, with canned salmon and some finely chopped onions. And he thought, this is delicious. And also, this is what makes Americans big and strong. So I want to make it for Japanese people because this will make them big and strong. So he's just an interesting guy in terms of the thought process to why he brought mayo and then also how he made mayonnaise in his own way and for like a Japanese palate. And so initially, like the first year that they came out, I think only 100 cases were sold. It wasn't very popular. But then the next year they sold like 1,000 cases. So things were starting to turn for him. Now, the Kewpie, you know, the Kewpie doll was not invented by Nakashima. This was invented in America for, as you write, December 1909 issue of Ladies Home Journal. And the character was, quote, a benevolent elf who did good deeds in a funny way. So did that all stem from this Rose O'Neill, the American artist? Is that where it came from? Yes. So this is part of, I think, Nakashima's charm is he saw that Kewpie was, as a character, was so popular in the U.S. and abroad and even in Japan. And so when he was making the mayo, he was like, I want to sell a product that is as popular as the Kewpie. So I will now hope that if I have this as like my logo, then this can be also really successful. So I think in 1922, so a couple of years before he started Kupi, he bought the rights to have it be like the logo of his company. But it's also the name of his mayonnaise. Yeah. And when he launched Kupi Minis, that wasn't the name of the company. And so initially the name translated to just food company. It was years later that he decided to change it. And so when he was trying to think of a name, he was like, I want it to be easily pronounceable for Japanese and English speakers. I want it to be unique and also to match the name of the product. So then the only option was Kupi, which is why he called it Kupi in the end. So he bought the rights for Japanese trademark. But what about when he sells it all over the world, like the United States? you said initially he didn't even know was being sold here. Right yeah so I read in company documents and it was a really small blip that Kewpie mayonnaise in the 60s or 70s inadvertently made its way to America and was in regional grocery stores whether they were western or Japanese and I was reading this and I was like wait a minute how is this possible so then I started talking to various like people at the company and so they were explaining to me different theories that they had. And one is that Japanese products at the time were really popular. And so exporters in Japan were taking whatever they could get their hands on, whether it was like soy sauce, sesame oil, and just dumping it into a box and like sending it to wherever they needed to go. And oftentimes that included products that weren't necessarily cleared to export. But it was kind of fascinating and funny to hear that cute bee mayonnaise was accidentally imported to the U.S. and so then they sent someone over to essentially like figure out what is going on and then to set up a legitimate distribution channel but then in turn that's how it led to CUPI being manufactured in America. So the book is a cookbook at least in part and so some of the ways you use it as interesting. I mean, first of all, mayonnaise chocolate cake is a thing from the 1930s or 40s because it was a cheap substitute for eggs and butter, etc. The other one I really liked, actually we're making today in the office at Milk Street, is apple galette, which instead of cutting butter into flour, you use Kewpie mayonnaise. So it's interesting that mayonnaise mayonnaise starts out as an easy substitute for other more expensive ingredients but sometimes you end up with actually a better product right right and all of the recipes are from my co-author and friend jesse yuchen and it was really fun to learn from kupi corporation and also different employees with how they use kupi mayonnaise in in various like dishes like dessert we were kind of surprised to see that people are adding it to meatballs to tenderize the meat. People are using it as the base of a sauce or a dressing to emulsify easier. And so I think it was really fun to watch Jesse come up with all of these different recipes that showed all these different facets to keeping mayonnaise and just mayonnaise in general in terms of how to cook with it in a way that maybe isn't what you expect. If you think about this product, it's got three things going for it. It's got a great name which is fun and works in multiple languages it has an iconic image and then it has a really iconic bottle with a red top and the mesh and everything else it could not get any better than that right you know i mean i mean if you look at a jar of hellman's mayonnaise what do you got you got a jar of with the word hellman's on it and hellman's doesn't mean anything to anybody so yeah like i can't even think about what the jar looks like in my brain right now whereas Like if you say QP, I know exactly what that bottle looks like. So this is a hundred year old company. You talked to a lot of the employees. Anything from the employees that surprised you? There were a couple of things that were funny. Like I learned about there is a certification within QP called Mayo Star Certified. And a lot of people apply to get this special certification, but only like a 300 or so actually get it. It's quite an honor at the company to go through training and to then be allowed to like teach elementary school students in Japan about mayonnaise, like how you make it and how it goes well with like vegetables and things like that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. You're trained to go to public schools and teach children about how to cook with mayonnaise? How to make mayonnaise and then how to eat with it. Really? Yeah. And it was so funny because I remember looking at the Japanese website for QP and was like, what is this? And then I was like, this is fascinating to hear that you have like this highly competitive, somewhat rigorous sounding certification and that a lot of people want to do this. And so there are things like that where I was just like, I haven't like heard of other companies doing things that kind of feel like random, but also like awesome, too. where it's just like there's a lot of like passion and almost like intensity to the way that they approach these things was like really fun to learn about. That's just so charming. I guess there's a well it kind of goes with the name. There's a certain offbeat humanistic side to this company right. It's more than just putting a product in a bottle. Right and I think that's the thing that made working on this cookbook so fun is like the word that came up a lot was quirky came up all the time like this company is just very quirky every new thing i learned was always like to them was very normal but to me was like fascinating or delightful just because i i don't really see companies doing stuff in this way at least thank you so much it's been a pleasure to spend some time in kewpie world yeah thanks for having me That was Elise Inamine. Her book is For the Love of Kewpie. Now it's time to answer your cooking questions with my co-host, Sarah Moulton. Sarah is, of course, the star of Sarah's Weeknight Meals on public television, also author of Home Cooking 101. So, Sarah, in your first show, your live show, it was a live show. Yes. It was called Cooking Live. It was a live call-in show. So you must have had some interesting moments. What was the most interesting, most embarrassing, most disastrous show you ever did? Oh, my God. And there were so many of them. There were so many of them. We had three fires on the show. We got six dirty phone calls. Was there a time delay? No. No time delay. Uh-uh. I was a sitting duck. So that went right out over the airwaves? It did. So I was making eggplant rollatini. and a guy calls up and he says, how do you make eggplant a la p***? And I surprised myself and I said, Scott, you've got too much time on your hands. And afterwards I was really pretty pleased with myself. I mean, I just cut him off and they cut him off and we moved on. It was fine. Can I just comment that if you're going to call into a live show and say something like that, you could be a slightly more original or creative. he did not excel in either category no he did not excel in any way and we didn't take any calls from any man for at least two weeks until we figured out how to screen it better you did this every night? for the first nine months it was Monday through Friday nights no and I worked at Gourmet during the day what? that's insane it was but I loved it wonderful team from start to finish it a great way to learn how to do TV Stellar people yeah Five hours a week All right All right You a pro right Thank you Yeah. Okay. Let's take your call. Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hi, my name is Margaret Williams. Hi, Margaret. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from Syracuse, New York. And how can we help you today? Well, I have a question on vegetable lasagna. I really, I love it. I love it when it's on a menu. I order it. But when I try to make it at home, it really comes out mushy and watery. And I've tried, you know, salting zucchini, trying to pre-cook some of the ingredients, and I just can't seem to get it right. It always kind of comes out just way too watery. So I wondered if you had any suggestions. Yeah. I mean, well, specifically for zucchini, it's a good idea to salt it. But was it sliced? Sliced. Okay, then you really need to pat it dry also. Okay. And, you know, I might even roast it first. Because when you think about lasagna, all the parts of it are cooked if you pre-cook the noodles. True. If you're using those noodles that are supposed to absorb liquid, this might not apply to that unless you had a very saucy sauce. But every part of it, you know, so whatever sauce you have is cooked and the noodles are cooked. And why wouldn't you want the vegetables to be cooked? because what happens when you cook vegetables is they're all water. You know, they're a high percentage of water. So if you just put raw mushrooms in there, you're going to have a watery mess. Same thing with zucchini, with eggplant. Butternut squash may not get tender. I would pre-cook your vegetables in a very flavorful way, which is a high-heat oven, and then layer it with the lasagna and whatever sauce you're using, and bake it for 15, 20 minutes until it's hot and the cheese is melted. So that's what I would say is cook your veggies before you put them in the lasagna and you'll do much better. And I would absolutely salt the zucchini. I would also salt eggplant if you're going to use that. Then pat it dry. Then brush it with oil and roast it. Chris? That's what I'm missing. Well, it's got a built-in problem, which is you have two problems. You have the problem that Sarah solved, which is you have to pre-cook roast the vegetables. And secondly, it has to compete with the cheese and other things in the casserole, right? So, I mean, tian, which is a great French dish of thinly sliced vegetables and beautifully presented in concentric circles and everything. I would do a baked vegetable dish like that because you don't have to compete with the cheese and the noodles and everything else. And if you love vegetables, that's going to be really delicious. But there's nothing better than butternut squash lasagna with a bechamel, the creamy sauce and gruyere. Oh, my God. Yeah, fine. Okay, cook a lot of sweet potatoes and butternut squash with a bechamel is fine. But anyway, look up Tian, T-I-A-N. You can use lots of different vegetables, and it's going to be absolutely gorgeous. Butternut squash lasagna. I will do both. Okay, there you go. Well, thank you so much. Yes. That's great. Take care. All right. Bye-bye. Bye. This is Milk Street Radio. If you're struggling with a recipe, give us a call, 855-426-9843, 855-426-9843, or email us at questions at MilkStreetRadio.com. Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling? Oh, hi. My name is Carrie. How are you? I'm doing well, thanks. How are you? Good. Good. I have a question about black cocoa powder. I tried using it to make chocolate scones to go with the strawberry butter I had made. And I used half of the black cocoa powder and half regular cocoa powder. But they came out dry and mushy at the same time. I guess I was wondering, is black cocoa powder interchangeable with other cocoa powders? No, but before we get to that, what else was in the recipe? Did you have baking soda, baking powder? What was the leavener? Baking soda. Soda, okay. Baking soda is alkaline, right? It's going to react with chocolate because chocolate is acidic. Dutch processed cocoa is alkaline. It's not acidic, okay? Which people liked when they were making cocoa a long time ago because it had better flavor. Black cocoa powder is even more processed, which means that that chemical reaction with the baking soda would be different than with regular cocoa powder. so you end up with probably less lift, which might mean it's mushy. I would not substitute. It's really used color more than anything else, but I wouldn't from a chemistry point of view. Have you made it with just regular cocoa powder before? Yes, and it was fine. Okay, well then that answers the question. The chemistry is wrong. If I want to use the black cocoa powder, do I change out the baking soda then for baking powder? Now you're living on the edge. This is Baking on the Edge by Carrie. Gotcha. Yes, you would. You would probably use half baking soda, half baking powder. But it's going to be tricky. Why did you do that in the first place? What was the reason for the substitution? Good question. I was just playing with the recipe. Like I was thinking it would be cool to try it. Good for you. I do that all the time. It works out about 30% of the time. Exactly. That's all right. I just wouldn't use it. Just use regular cocoa powder. What do you use a black cocoa powder for then? It's mainly for coloring, meaning it really gives you the blackest frosting, the blackest. Think of Oreo cookies. Right. So it has a lot to do with color. It also dissolves better in liquids than the other cocos, but it's a milder chocolate flavor, and it's very lean, and I don't think I would use it, period. Okay. I'm sorry. You were having fun. I agree with Chris. It's good to experiment. Now the president of the Black Cocoa Powder Association is going to call us. Yes. What do you mean? Don't use it. Yeah. I know. So the Dutch processed cocoa is milder in chocolate flavor. It has less acid than the regular cocoa. And I've decided after all these years, I really prefer regular cocoa because it's got more of a forward chocolate bite. Well, even worse than that, I now am eating milk chocolate, which I haven't eaten since I was about 12. I don't know you anymore. I'm sick and tired of these, like 80% solids. We are not friends anymore. No, no, I like 60%. Well, that's okay. I agree with you on that one. But milk chocolate? Yeah. That's the other extreme. There's so much milk in there, there's no chocolate. I've crossed the Rubicon of chocolate. Oh, dear. All right. Okay, Carrie. There you go. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate you both. All right. Bye-bye. Thanks. Bye. You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Coming up, what's new with Padma Lakshmi? This is Milk Street Radio. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. After 17 years of hosting Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi knew it was time to leave. Since her departure, she's been busy. Her new book, Padma's All-American, defines American food through a modern lens. She's also giving the competitive cooking genre a makeover with her new TV series, America's Culinary Cup. And when she's not doing either of those things, well, you might just find her doing stand-up comedy on stage in Brooklyn. Joining us now to discuss her long and varied career, Padma, welcome back to Milk Street. Thank you. I'm glad to be here again. I've read a lot since our last chat about what you're doing now and there seems to be and I think you've said this yourself sort of a changing view of who you are comedy a new show so what is this new version of yourself or is it a new version it's just another part of yourself you want to explore? I don't think it's a new version of myself. I think I'm who I've always been. Perhaps it's just an evolution in the public facing version of myself. You know, sometimes when we're young, and I don't want to generalize, but I can say it was true for me. I, you know, fought against what the perception of me was, or what people wanted me to be, or I fought to be what people wanted me to be as well, you know, whether it was modeling or acting or writing, all of those things together made up my living. And I didn't really have any choice in the matter for a long time. I think I was struggling to come out from under that. I think I had a lot of imposter syndrome. For many years, you know, seven, eight years of doing Top Chef, I really felt at a disadvantage. And then at some point, I just decided I was going to be okay with me, even if anybody else wasn't. And if, you know, I was a walking contradiction, then so be it, you know? Well, yeah, I would say being a host of a cooking show for 17 years and then doing stand-up comedy is a pretty, you know, let me just, well, I'll get to that later, but I just imagine doing stand-up is people who do it often comment it's one of the most frightening things in the world to do. Oh yeah I mean it's excruciating and exhilarating but mostly excruciating and sometimes exhilarating. Yeah I mean I think after so many years on Top Chef I think I was a little burnt out and so I really just wanted something to shake me up intellectually something to jolt my creativity and challenge me in a way that I hadn't been challenged before. And so, you know, I'd been leading up to the comedy stuff for a few years, starting out with just hosting a show, live show here twice a year for charity in Brooklyn. And it just sort of ballooned from that. I wouldn't call myself a stand-up chameleon. I think this is something that I'm just dipping my toe into. Now, when you were just starting out many years ago, you were on a live variety show in Italy called Domenica Inn. Yes. That was a crazy show. I mean, you said the Italian analog for the Today Show didn't look anything like the Today Show to me. People were dancing, doing all sorts of nutty things. And the quote is, Lakshmi's job was to play a caricature foreigner, exotic and fun loving, whose not quite fluent grasp of the Italian language was exaggerated for laughs. So when did you learn to speak Italian? In Italy. I mean, I had a semester of Spanish under my belt, and then I started modeling. I went to Europe. I lived between Milan and Paris, and in sort of four or five years of being there, I learned to speak Italian quite well. So it wasn't that exaggerated. It wasn't that much of a caricature, to be honest. You know, I did speak Italian in a kind of irregular way. I learned from the cab drivers, you know, and I had a little segment in the show that, you know, was sponsored by an encyclopedia company and it was on Sundays. And so we had a lot of school children write to us. And so I would pick a name out of a fishbowl and I would call them and they would have to guess the meaning of a very difficult word. And I would also guess it was sort of like match game. They could either disagree or agree with me. And if they won, they got a whole set of reference books for their school's library. And the show was on from 2 to 8 p.m. with no five second tape delay. But, you know, everything I use today, I learned on that set in Rome because it was live, because you had to think on your feet. And I still use a lot of what I learned from that experience in television today. It was a great, great training ground. Yeah, I was going to say that being a host of Top Chef would be much easier than doing what you did in a long, long, long Italian Today Show format, which was very loose. So when you hosted Top Chef for all those seasons, what's the job? I mean, a lot of it is just being a traffic cop. A lot of it is keeping things moving making sure you get opinions from every judge on the panel You know a lot of it is just being a good host like you would at a dinner party Make sure the food comes out at the right time Make sure everybody meets everybody. Everybody gets to talk. You know, all of that stuff. And it was grueling. I mean, the biggest thing you need to be the host of Top Chef is endurance and an ironclad digestive system. You said you came here when you were very young. You went back to India a few years later. Yeah. But there's a little quote I just want to read. We lived in a seaside town with my uncle and aunt and all my cousins in the same house. There were eight or ten of us in a two-bedroom flat, and I remember being very happy. Well, I mean, yes, I think I was happy because there were a lot of people there, you know, not in spite of it. I mean, the way I lived was not uncommon for middle class Indians at the time. I mean, we all lived in multi-generational households. But, you know, what I may not have had in material possessions, I had as far as input and influence and love and care. And, you know, I just felt part of something and I didn't feel lost. I felt like I was where I belonged. I mean, I missed my mother who was in America, you know, and, but I had this very bifurcated childhood where in America, I was basically, you know, the child of a single parent who was a nurse and worked full time. I was a latchkey kid in the seventies and eighties. And in India, you know, we had no personal space whatsoever. And I slept on the floor with my aunt in my grandparents' bedroom and we had no privacy, but there was a lot of love, a lot of stimulation, always somebody to play with or fight with. I had a lot of cousins there. And I hung out in the kitchen, and I was very doted on by my grandmother. I was the oldest grandchild, and I didn't feel like I was lacking in any way. In your new book, Padma's All-American, you talk about going to the San Carlos Reservation, Arizona. And that's where you learn a lot about indigenous foodways. So there's a lot of discussion about what exactly constitutes American food. So how do you reconcile foodways that are native to a place and a culture versus the mishmash of cuisines that we see so commonly today? Can you hold those two things in your head at the same time? Absolutely. I hold them all in my head. And it's about celebrating the indigenous food that existed and still exists in this country, but also learning from it and then adding to it with all of the wonderful flavors and ingredients that generations of immigrants have brought to this country. I mean, that also is our heritage now. That also is such an incredibly important part, not only of our foodways, but of the very tapestry of what our American culture is. You know, both things can exist. All things can exist, you know, and that is how we eat as Americans. We're all dabbling in each other's culture. We are all eating everything all the time. And I think that is really what makes American food so exciting. You know, I want everybody to cook Indian food and Chinese food and Jamaican food. I just want us to give credit where credit is due. That's all. I mean, how boring would life be if we all just stayed in our own cultural silos rather than exploring this wonderful, vast world of flavor and ingredients that we're so lucky to have in abundance? So let's talk about America's Culinary Cup for a moment. So this is your new TV series, which is kind of an Oscars of the food world, right? Yeah. But I read somewhere it's a crew of 350 people. Yeah, all told, yes. Really? We do a TV show of like eight people. So I'm trying to figure out in my head what you do with 350 people. It's amazing. Well, we had to build everything from scratch. And I wanted to custom design the kitchen so it wasn't a television set, but an actual working high-end kitchen. Is this on a soundstage of some kind? Yes, yes. And, you know, electricians, plumbers, fire safety people, engineers, carpenters, lighting techs, you know, all those people, the art department, it adds up. I mean, also, I had a lot of fully formed opinions about how I wanted to do things. And I'm very happy with the way the set came out. You know, it looks nothing like any other TV show you've ever seen. How is it different? Well, most sets are rectangular, and this isn't. It's oval. It has a lot more curves to it. You know, there have been studies done that people feel happier and are more productive in an environment with more curves. Like, that's not just rectilinear. and I wanted something that was almost theater in the round or in the oval. And every decision we made was in order to support the chef doing their best work. I think the ethos that I wanted to start with was different in that I'm not throwing obstacles at the chef. You know, I just wanted to do things differently because I thought that my genre of competitive cooking needed a refresh, Just not only for the audience and the people at home, but for myself. I wanted to be stimulated again. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to see what I could do when I held the reins. And the winner gets a million dollars. Is that right? Yes, yes. The winner gets a million dollars. So you had no trouble finding contestants, I guess. No. Well, that's the thing. You'd be surprised how many very, very well-known chefs a million dollars brings out of the woodwork. It's a lot of money. And so right away, it catapults everyone's game to a higher level. I will be watching the first episode intently. Yes, and please let me know. So I'm going to touch back on comedy again. So you get out on stage. You said them laughing at something you said is like sex without touching, which I thought was another great Padma quote. so so just tell me about that first minute so you get out there applause has stopped then what what's going through your head well a lot of it is also you know there's got to be like a mini preamble still because as I said I'm so new at it that I have to you know kind of say you guys are probably wondering why that lady from Top Chef is standing here you know trying to make you laugh But usually nowadays, I mean, my material is mostly about very quotidian things like what it's like to, you know, be a single mom and date at my age or, you know, a lot of it is about being an immigrant and how, you know, there's a real cultural divide or communication lapse between generations as well. Can you give me an example of that? Well, like a big one was I was doing a guest spot at Second City here in Brooklyn. And, you know, the audience has to give you one word and that has to inspire a story from your life. And so they said a couple of things and they said puberty. And I said, well, my daughter is in puberty. And at the same time, I am in perimenopause. So, you know, it's basically the estrogen wars. And then I just tell them real stories from my life that are kind of absurd. And, you know, my comedy is sort of nascent, as I said, but it's also liberating because I say things and my stand up, I would never say in a press interview or on social media or, you know, a network cooking show because it's not being recorded. And it's a pact that you make with the audience. It's like, we're going to have an open conversation here. And it's all going to be in the interest of making you laugh. And it's just something I enjoy. It's not, you know, I wouldn't make more of it. Unfortunately, I was outed in the 7,000 word profile in a New Yorker about it. But it was really something that was just sort of off to the side, you know, kind of lo-fi hobby that I enjoyed doing that was just for me, not really for everybody. And now, you know, it's sort of blown up into this thing that it really shouldn't be yet, to be honest. Well, I don't know. Makes you even more interesting, if that's possible. Thank you. Last thing. Is there something you're particularly grateful for that's unexpected in your life? I mean, obviously, fame, fortune, et cetera. But is there something small you're particularly grateful for? Yeah. I mean, I just like sharing things with people, and I like listening to people's lives. I think maybe I'm just craving connection in a world that is more and more isolated. But I like that human exchange. I like it preferably live. And I think that's also why I like stand-up. If you're willing to listen, if you're willing to scratch at the surface of someone's life and hear what makes them who they are, you will be changed for it. Something will seep into your subconscious and months or weeks later, and be like, oh yeah, that thing was said to me. And now I really understand it in a deeper way. I think that's what I'm trying to do. And that is what guides my career. I think that is the only compass I can point to. Pema, this has been, not unexpectedly, a fabulous conversation. Thank you. Per usual. Thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you so much. That was Padma Lakshmi. Her latest book is Padma's All-American. You can find an extended cut of our interview on Tuesday, March 10th at MilkStreetRadio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Christopher Kimball. You're listening to Milk Street Radio. Next up, my co-host Sarah Moult and I will be answering a few more of your cooking questions. I'm Christopher Kimball and you're listening to Milk Street Radio. Right now, my co-host Sarah Malt and I will be answering a few more of your cooking questions. Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling? This is Nancy Roberts of Uniontown, Ohio. Hi, Nancy. How can we help you today? Well, last year I was at a friend's house and she served homemade apple cake and it left an aftertaste of, I figured, baking soda. and she sent me home with the piece. The next day I ate it and it was fine. And then just recently I was at church and after the coffee hour with cleaning up, the lady asked me if I want to take some cookies home. And I said, oh, just freeze them for next week. And she said, I can't, they've been frozen before. And I thought, well, I never heard of that. So I brought the cookies home and I put them in the freezer. And a couple of days later I took them out and they were ghastly tasting. I imagine the leavening, I'm assuming it was baking powder. And I was just curious as to what chemically was happening that caused that. It's weird. Well, you've completely baffled me because if you just said you ate a cookie or an apple cake that had a bitter aftertaste, I would say, yeah, there's too much baking soda or baking powder in there. But if you tell me that it tasted good and then it didn't taste good or it didn't taste good and then it did taste good, I'm completely confused. Here's a possibility. Baking soda, if there's too much leavener, as Sarah said, in a baked good, the chemical reaction is not thorough. That is, some of the baking soda remains because there's too much. We all agree that's why you get a bitter aftertaste. The question, which is really interesting, is later on you tasted it and it tasted fine. the only thing I can imagine is as that leftover baking soda sitting in the cake there was a continued reaction of some kind with the moisture in the cake for example that dissipated that additional baking soda flavor That's all I can think of. Well, it was an apple cake, which is, you know, pretty moist. Well, baking powder, for example, reacts to two things. Liquid, so at room temperature, if you mix it in and there's liquid of some kind in the batter, it'll start a reaction. And then heat, when it gets over 120 degrees, it'll start also reacting. So it could be that leftover leavener, whatever it was, sitting in a cake that was moist, would continue to have some reaction over time. How do we explain the cookies? Did you taste the cookies before you froze them again? Well, I had them at church, and they were fine. Oh, you did? You did have them at church, okay. I brought them home, and I put them right away in the freezer. Took them out a week later, and then had terrible aftertaste. Was the aftertaste similar to the aftertaste with the apple cake? Yes. They were oatmeal cookies, by the way, which are moist. That one I don't understand. The apple cake was not fine. You let it sit, and it was fine. The cookies were fine to start, and you froze them, and then they weren't fine afterwards. Yeah. It's the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. Freezing them would make them drier, right? Freezing gets rid of moisture and stuff. I can understand that, but I don't understand why you get that soapy, bitter aftertaste. Well, this is one of the best calls we've had in a long time. Or the worst calls, because we have no answer. Well, no, but now I'm curious. This is really interesting. This is like a murder mystery. Yeah, we're going to have to research this one. Who did it? I think we've answered the first. We have to go research the second. So it's a great question. and we're stumped. They said on Card Talk, stump the chumps. Okay. We are going to get back to you. We are going to figure this out. Yeah. Well, I was just curious. No, it's a good question. Okay. Well, thank you. Take care. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. This is Milk Street Radio. If you have a kitchen disaster, give us a call, 855-426-9843, 855-426-9843, or just email us at questions at MilkStreetRadio.com. Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hi, this is Claire from Fayetteville, Arkansas. How can we help you? I have an issue with bread crust. I apparently can't make it without it being rock hard. And I've tried everything. I've tried the steaming and the covering. I've used half AP and half bread flour. Let's start with the beginning. Is this an enriched white bread? is this a European style bread? What kind of bread? Any kind of bread. I've used sourdough. I've done a boule. I've done enriched white bread. I just can't make it not hard. Okay. A few things. First of all, an enriched bread will end up having a softer crust, right? Like something's got milk or butter in it than a leaner bread. You've tried steaming. How did you get steam in the oven? I put the hot water in first and then I put the bread in. I don't know if it makes a difference. I usually put the bread in and then I pour the water in so that steam comes right up and the bread's right there because the steam's only going to help for the first few minutes. My understanding of the steam is it will help the crust not set right away. Now, the reason you don't want it to set is you want the bread to rise properly before the crust sets and it stops rising. So I think it would give you a thinner crust because the bread's going to rise more, which is good. but I'm not absolutely sure it does end up with a softer crust. The only other thing I can suggest is you might not be getting enough oven spring. That is, when you put the dough, it's been proofed, it's been knocked down, it's been shaped, it's risen the second time. You put it in the oven, and then you want to get that oven spring, right? You get a lot of rise. It may be that when you're putting your shaped dough in the oven, perhaps that dough is a bit over-risen by the time it gets in the oven, and that will mean you get less oven spring, which I think will lead to a thicker crust. Sarah? What I'm a little confused about, Claire, is what kind of bread, because it was my understanding that a baguette or even a sourdough loaf or a rustic bread is supposed to have a hard crust. Right. It's like the bottom of the crust is the hardest part. Like you have to turn the bread sideways to cut through the bottom. And even the top part is very hard, and you have to kind of saw through it. The very bottom-ist part, the part that's on the metal pan, gets super hard. How do you know when the bread is done? So I do the tapping on the bottom part to make the hollow sound. Because when Sarah asks that question, it's a good question. Maybe you're just over-baking your bread. I mean, it's possible. You might want to start temping your bread. Claire, whose recipes are you using? I have used so many different ones. The only time I ever got close to having a really nice crust was this one time when I just beat the heck out of it. I used the dough hook on my stand-up mixer, and then I took it out and I beat it on the counter. and it made a nicer crust with the steam and it didn't do the hard thing on the bottom, but it made a tunnel. This is like a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Maybe you're just not kneading the bread enough and getting enough gluten development because, you know, do you use a standing mixer for kneading? I do, and I've tried actually doing the standing mixer plus the hand, but I have a little bit of arthritis in my hands, so it's hard for me to do the hand one. Well, the thing that's interesting is with a stand mixer, sometimes the dough sits on that dough hook and just spins around like a merry-go-round. It's not actually doing the work it needs to do. If you're not properly kneading the bread, then the gluten is not going to be developed. You're not going to get the right kind of rise, and you're going to end up with a much denser loaf of bread and a denser crust. So I think it may be that you're not getting enough knead. Now, one thing you could do is to use a no-knead bread recipe. Yeah, there's several books with the no-knead procedure. I think that would be a good way to go. And I made those breads, and they are wonderful. You just have to be patient because it's a very slow rise. And you bake it in a Dutch oven as well, and so it seals in the moisture. I think what's happening is you're just not developing the gluten enough in the bread. That's what it sounds like to me. Yeah, true. And you also mentioned all-purpose in bread flour. Make sure you use all-bread flour. Oh, okay. There's more protein in bread flour, which means you get a more developed gluten in a lighter bread. Like a King Arthur's got a very high protein content of almost 13. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's the one I use. And do get an instant read thermometer. Make sure you're checking your temps because you could be over baking as well. Yeah. Okay, I will. Okay, Claire. Thank you guys so much. I love you. Bye. Bye. You're listening to Milk Street Radio. And finally, it's cocktail hour. Here's Marina Mercer-Berini. She's the master mixologist for Wynn Resorts North America, creating cocktails and recipes for dozens of bars and restaurants. So I believe the cocktail of the year is definitely the martini. I'm going to make it two different ways. One is called the hot and dirty martini. My style of creating cocktails is definitely multi-sensory. I love to think of almost like a stock or a soup base. You're building layer by layer block by block of flavor. So the spicy olive brine that I make, I take basically brines of everything you can think of. So we'll take pepperoncinis in brine, filthy olive brine, capers in brine. That's going to give a little bit of those perfumey notes. Green peppercorns in brine. I love to use roasted red peppers because we want a little bit of sweet, salty, umami, bitter. and then I take habanero chilies and jalapeno and infuse for about 24 hours. I like to do vodka but you can use gin you know I always say pick the spirit that you enjoy drinking and build from there. Get it really ice cold and then strain in a beautiful martini glass and then I love a great martini tray that has garnishes that you can sample and go back and forth. So there is an olive that's stuffed with an African piri piri chili. I do candied lemon zest for a little bit of sweetness and that that citrus. And then there's a little surprise and delight with these. They look like a spoonful of caviar but it's actually winter black truffle juice that's in these little pearls. So you have this little pop of umami and luxury to it and I just think it's the perfect choose your own adventure every time. And so for our second martini, we're going to completely change gears. It's the espresso martini. An espresso martini in cocktail lore is said to have been invented by a bartender in London named Dick Bradsell. And apparently a supermodel came to his bar and said, I would love a drink that would wake me up and, pardon my language, F me up. And that's exactly what an espresso martini does, right? Vodka is traditional, but I love to add tequila. And then my secret weapon, and I'm going to tell you my trick for my trade here, is a Madagascar vanilla liqueur. It's this warm hug of a flavor of vanilla that really makes every other flavor in the martini taste like its best self. And then what makes this one that I like to make so special is a syrup that I call Apollonia syrup. So it's cocoa powder, dehydrated orange blossoms, black pepper, and it's floral, it's sweet, it's sharp, it's peppery. Shake this up with ice, strain it into your martini glass. You're going to have that beautiful layer of froth, and I like to rest atop a dehydrated orange chip that I dip halfway into dark chocolate, and then I'll sprinkle a little of the apollonia spices there on top, wafting hint here your nose as you're enjoying this espresso martini. So cheers to the martini, however you choose to make it, the hot and dirty, the espresso, or if you're curious, you can try it both ways. Cheers! That was Master Mixologist Marina Mercer-Berini. She's a 2026 James Beard Award semifinalist for outstanding professional in cocktail service. You can find Marina's recipe for the hot and spicy martini at MilkStreetRadio.com. That's it for this week's show. To hear all of our episodes, please go to MilkStreetRadio.com or wherever you get your podcasts. To explore Milk Street and everything we have to offer, please go to 177MilkStreet.com. There you can become a member, get full access to every recipe, free standard shipping from the Milk Street store, and more. You can also find us on Facebook at Christopher Kimball's Milk Street, on Instagram at 177 Milk Street. We'll be back next week, and thanks, as always, for listening. Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street, in association with GBH. Co-founder, Melissa Baldino. Executive producer, Annie Sinzabaugh. Senior editor, Melissa Allison. Senior Producer, Sarah Clapp Producer, Caroline Davis Assistant Producer, Mari Orozco Additional Editing by Sydney Lewis Audio Mixing by Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts Theme Music by 2Bob Crew Additional Music by George Brendel Eggloff Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio is distributed by PRX From PRX.