842: Adventures in Tea with Henrietta Lovell and Flavor Forward with Nik Sharma

What is the secret to making great toast? Oh, you're just going to go in with the hard-hitting questions. I'm Dan Pashman from The Sporkful. We like to say it's not for foodies, it's for eaters. We use food to learn about culture, history, and science. There was a time we looked into allegations of discrimination, and bon appetit, or when I spent three years inventing a new pasta shape. It's a complex noodle that you put together. Every episode of The Sporkful, you're going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. The Sporkful. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, we've got something for everyone. We're talking about the U.S. women Olympians taking home more medals than the men, the U.S. women's national team roster heading into the She Believes Cup, and the latest on the WNBA-CBA negotiations. Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM. So, I recently got to travel to Japan with my family, and it was an absolutely fantastic trip. And while it's a little bit of a cliche to talk about, it is just so true that so many people there have a real passion for what they do. be it an ancient craft or making noodles the way that they were taught for generations or something as simple as helping you find a pair of jeans you're really gonna love and it made me think about my favorite kind of food people to talk to the ones that are just head over heels with what they do and today we get to talk to two such people later in the show we'll visit with nick sharma the former scientist turned cookbook author now living his best life in America's test kitchen. And first, we talk to the wonderful Henrietta Lovell. Founder of the Rare Tea Company, Henrietta started her shop in Britain, but now finds herself supplying teas to the best restaurants in the world, including Noma in Copenhagen and Cezanne in Tokyo. But what sets buying tea from her apart isn't just the delicate flavors, it's the understanding that you're buying from farmers and true craftspeople. And her own craft is in connecting with those folks and understanding their work. So hey, Henrietta, it's so lovely to see you. Hello, Frances. Lovely to see you and speak to you. Thank you so much. Yeah, same. So I'm excited for this because I grew up around tea. Obviously, my family's Chinese, and I've always wanted to learn more about it. So every time I have a chance to talk to someone who really knows about tea, I get really jazzed. Because tea is so amazing, right? It is the most consumed beverage on earth after water. It has like the second longest history of any beverage, you know, going back to like 2700 BC or something crazy. And yet most Americans and even as you told me, most Brits like yourself really don't know that much about it. So let's start with how did you get so into tea? That's a long and winding road, but it's been a fascinating one. I started, like most people, drinking a kind of pretty generic, big brand, industrial tea bag. And I thought that's what tea was. And I think that for a lot of people, that's what tea is. And then I had the huge privilege and adventure to go and work in China. And that was sort of at the end of the last millennium. I'm quite an old lady. It was venerable. Yeah, it was in the sort of late 90s, early 2000s. 2000s I got to go to China and I got to try amazing tea that really blew my mind and I I know we often use that phrase but it was it was really mind-altering and world-altering and shattering because I just thought this is something I know I'm very very familiar with my culture is sort of made up of English breakfast tea and then I got a little cup of oolong and I didn't really know that oolong existed i didn't know that tea could be drunk out of a little tiny cup and it could be brewed from real whole leaves leaves that would rehydrate a herb that rehydrated into a leaf and that the flavor profile would be so extraordinarily complex you know it started sort of all green and luscious and went into tropical notes of mango and pineapple and then ended with this lovely dry mineral finish and i was like what is this the tea and it's not going It wasn't because it was flavoured or because it had sort of chemicals on it. It was just this beautifully crafted leaf. And I thought, God, I've been missing out on so much. I thought, this is very fascinating. I want to learn more about the history. And I started reading things and finding out that these ancient terroirs that have been around for, as you say, millennia, still existed and tea was still made in the same way. And at the time, China had been quite closed off for quite a long time. and it just started to open up and it was possible to go and visit places that were kind of mythological imagine if champagne for instance had been something you could read about but you couldn't go to this region of france and then suddenly you could and you found that they were still making this ancient fizzy wine in the same way that they'd be making it for you know hundreds of years but here you have you know tea being made in the same ways for thousands of years and And it was so exciting to be that person who went and found it. And also how extraordinary I must have seemed to the people who live and work in those remote regions that suddenly turned up. And one of the first times I wanted to take photos and I thought, I'll look great in a red dress in a green field. I wanted to tell the story about these places. So I thought, I'll put on a red dress. And of course, that's a wedding dress color in time. They're like, here's a single woman in a red dress. Oh, my God. I'm so naive. And I've learned a lot. I'm still very naive and I'm still learning a lot. So forgive me for any mistakes. Okay, so let's talk about the tea itself for a moment because I think this is one thing that is such a, both a source of intrigue for me, but also seems sort of mysterious. So like you said, a beautiful tea, simply steeped in water can have so many different flavors and can evolve through the course of your drinking that same tea right it's not just in that one mouthful it's like the second cup of that same tea or the third sip of that same tea actually can taste different um i once heard that tea is something like um like physically chemically has 2500 flavor compounds yeah you know the natural compounds that create flavor where wine has a few hundred so there's an enormous range of flavors that can be had in tea. It's like a cornucopia. It's crazy, but it all comes from the same plant. Like matcha to a black tea is all from the same plant. So tell us, what are some of the factors that make one tea different from another? Well, it's such a brilliant, it's such a wide story as well. I want to say when a chef comes into my tasting room and they see the range, they're like, what? And then we start tasting the range of flavor profiles. It's so vast that people feel like they've just learned a new color or got a new palette to play with. Even the pH changes. So wine, of course, is always acidic, but the pH of tea can change from neutral into acid and alkaline. So you've got so much going on. But also from fruity to nutty to chocolate to malt to citrus, there's almost nothing that you can't find. I can give you a tea that tastes like peaches. A specific tea from a specific region in Cholo on a farm called Sertemwa in Malawi, there's a specific varietal of a specific tea made in a specific way that will taste like peaches and apicots. That's wild. And so the factors that alter that flavour are exactly the same with wine. Everything you know about wine, it comes from one plant, grapes. Tea comes from Camellia sinensis. And then all the factors of terroir and varietal. So, you know, there are many varieties of grapes, there are many varieties of tea within the two main branches. And then when you plant it, how you plant it, the pH of the soil, how the water drains off that field, what the gradient of that field is, how high it is, when the sun hits the field in a certain morning, whether there's cloud cover at a certain time of year, what the rainfall is, all those multitude bagaries of that tiny spot of the world will will change the flavor profile. And then, of course, you've got the seasons. When do you pick it? How do you pick it? And then how do you process it? So are you keeping it completely natural as it is and just drying it, making a white tea? Are you roasting it, toasting it, making it a green tea, steaming it in Japan? Are you then crushing it a little bit to start oxidization to make an oolong and controlling that oxidization to make maybe a light oolong into a dark oolong? or are you crushing it oxidizing it and then roasting it in a in a way to produce a black tea and then you can go even further and ferment it into a puerh so i mean take all that knowledge that you've amassed about choosing a wine and what what flavor profiles you like and you'll find that in tea and that brings me to the really important thing it's like with a wine you want to know a bit of a story, don't you? You want to know not beyond the color, where does it come from? Beyond the country, what region? Beyond the region, what part of that region? Beyond that, what farm, what maker, what craftsman? And when you start hearing the story of amazing craftsmen, you fall more deeply in love and the flavor appreciation improves. And the same is true of tea. And I love you said this to me the other day, which is when people talk about wine, you can tell that they think it's valuable because they talk about where it's from and how it's made and they know all this detail about it and yet we don't do that with tea but you could and we can value tea and we can value the people who make tea and maybe let's go here because i want to ask you about the regions that you source your tea can i tell you about this one sure what are you drinking this is called cloud tea i call we call this cloud tea this comes from Nayan Linnibad, she's a female tea maker and she actually owns her own land in Meghalaya in India, in the Himalayas, Himalaya. And, you know, I can tell you that this is made by someone who really cares about her community, her land and the flavor of what she produces. She doesn't want to produce lots of tea. She wants to produce really good tea that will change your mind about how tea and India can be and it's light it's got a lovely chocolatey um like dark chocolate burnt sugary sort of aromas um a little bit of um maltiness and a high florality and by florality I don't mean like lots of flowers but like lots of bright aromas coming off the top oh beautiful see I love that it's really something you can fall in love with I mean and it floods your life with pleasure it costs a few cents more to go and find those amazing teas per cup really just a few cents and then you get all that from it if you trade it up in wine to get the really good stuff it's it's a lot of dollars bottle of several hundred that bottle of several thousand and but here you're a few cents and you can really make a difference Henrietta Lavelle is the founder of Rare Tea Company more with her in a minute and then our friend Nick Sharma joins us with tips on how to make your home cooking even better I'm Francis Slam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media. Hey, Kara Swisher here. I want to let you know that Vox Media is returning to South by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcasts. Join us from March 13th through the 15th for live tapings of Today Explained, Teffy Talks, Prof G Markets, and of course, your two favorite podcasts, Pivot and On with Kara Swisher. The stage will also feature sessions from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, Marquez Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Tu, and Robin Arzon. It's all part of the Vox Media podcast stage at South by Southwest presented by Odoo. Visit voxmedia.com slash SXSW to pre-register and get your special discount on your innovation badge. That's voxmedia.com slash SXSW to register. Really, you should register. We sell out and we hope to see you there. 100K, a.k.a. Tori Dunlop, a fellow personal finance creator who's changing how an entire generation thinks about money. Tori's journey is a masterclass in turning personal finance wins into a platform that empowers millions. She opens up about the real strategy behind hitting that six-figure milestone without the typical privileged blind advice and how she's redefining what it means to be a wealthy woman in 2026. We're diving deep into investment strategies for real people with real budgets and why financial feminism isn't just a buzzword, it's a movement. Get ready for an unfiltered conversation about money, entrepreneurship, and what it really takes to build both personal wealth and a business empire. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash you're rich BFF. I'm Francis Lam and this is the Splendid Table, the show for curious cooks and eaters. We're talking with Henrietta Lavelle, tea explorer and founder of Rare Tea Company. Let's get back to it with her. You buy and sell teas mainly, I think, from like three different regions, right? That have different styles of tea. Like who've been producing tea and like enjoying tea in their own culture in a different way. Teas from China, from Japan. And this is a little bit of a unique situation, but South Asia and East Africa, which is, I believe the tea industry started there really because British brought tea there to be farmed for consumption. in Europe. In the global north, yeah. But tell us about these three regions and how they differ from one another in broad brushstrokes for a beginner. So I started in China where tea began. And it really, as you said, millennia of tradition. And rather like wine, a long cultural appreciation. I mean, emperors were buried with their favorite kind of teas for the afterlife. I mean, and all through history, it's been considered precious, a medicine, something that we would trade up to get the best we could afford always. You know, like just like wine, we might have a cheap wine on a Wednesday night. And then if your mother in law is coming around on Sunday, you might buy something a bit better to impress her. You know, you aspire to what you could afford. And there's this huge differential in price range in teas and depending on how they're crafted, how rare they are, how special, how difficult they are to make. and China's had that for a really long time, and still to this day, a tea farmer thrives and flourishes like a vineyard, because if he's making really great tea, he can get a great value for it. The only real issue is the craftsmanship. It's difficult to keep. People don't want to live in very rural communities and do agricultural work. That's the main problem that tea has, and otherwise, if you make great tea, you're doing really well in China. And in the, I think it was the fifth century, the Chinese shared tea with Japan and Japan also has this very rich culture of tea appreciation. It's changing slightly now and people are drinking matcha lattes, which is so strange. From the country that created matcha as a ceremonial sort of. Precious, meditational. Yeah. And I've just, I spent five weeks in China and 25 and I saw a lot of iced tea, which is really strange too. because tea is really supposed to be as a kind of medicine, warm and good for your body, and having it cold is really anathema to ancient tradition. But things move and change and customs and people change. But we know now, wherever we are in the world, if you want to buy Japanese tea or really good Chinese tea, you pay a lot of money for it. That's not because it's better. That's because there's a market for it and it's well appreciated and people understand its value. But if we took tea from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, where the British took it, you know, they stole the tea bush from China and they started planting it in places that were their colonial lands, which is a dreadful, awful story. And then into East Africa, there isn't an indigenous high value for tea because it was brought in. And the market is really an external market. And we've lost our value for tea, that appreciation and understanding. So it's an economically very, very different story. Interesting. In fact, there are about 15 million people working in tea in those regions. And most of them are women and most of them living in poverty. And this is, I mean, I've definitely noticed on your website, for instance, on Rare Tea Company's website, you know, you're very proud of all the teas that you source from all these different places. But to my mind, when I'm reading the stories of the producers in South Asia and East Africa, like to me, there feels like a special care there. I fell in love with tea as a drink. And I thought, I really want everyone to know this beautiful tea that I've fallen in love with. that we think there's only this one industrial thing and there's all this amazing leaf. So I started Rare Tea back in 2004 for that reason. And then I understood there was a very different economic story to tell and that there's a lot of exploitation. And I wanted to change that story. And I thought, well, it's possible. Tea has been and is appreciated and people who work in tea can thrive, more than survive, thrive. And so where it's an exploitative industry that survives on poverty, I thought, God, there's an answer to that. There's a change that can happen. And by selling tea from places like Japan, where there is no economic necessity, you know, I'm not doing anyone a favor by buying matcha. I'm just lucky to have those relationships. But by putting it right beside a tea from Malawi in East Africa or Nepal and saying, look, taste these. they're the same quality they taste different but they're the same quality they could exist on the menu at Noma or Cezanne in Tokyo you know they're appreciated by by chefs and and restauranteurs around the world who really you know I think we respect their their palates more than you can just hear me saying it I think then we can say look this really does have value and it's just really about changing our perception so putting a Malawi peony beside a Chinese white opinion saying look these are just as good as one another that's very exciting isn't it and i think it helps people understand and i do feel that those impact teas where people paying more and understanding and falling in love with teas from malawi where they have more of an impact on a community i feel more excited and um that's why i get up in bed in the morning no i love that i absolutely i think that's amazing so okay so help us right if we are rookie tea drinkers or like you All we know of tea is iced tea or whatever. We have like a small, tea has a small place in our life, but we're interested and we want to maybe learn more, maybe see what's out there and see what we like and what we might gravitate towards. How would you suggest a person start? The very most important thing is I think find someone who buys a tea from a tea farmer, from a tea community, from people who make tea, because then they're going to get the value of the tea and also they're not just buying a commodity product. they're buying a crafted beautiful thing from a farmer and i think that's always going to taste better i think i i went to um a mad symposium in copenhagen the food symposium and i heard farinadria say that once if you want amazing flavor find amazing farmers and i've over the last 20 something years i've found that to be true so find a direct trade tea company and then start with the tea that you're familiar with so you know like for instance i have a you know i sell black iced teas you know but i there come i can tell you the name of the farm where it comes from and it's a beautiful version of a loose leaf iced tea and i think if if you try that something you're familiar with and you say oh now hold on a second that tastes a lot better than the industrial one which has no terroir no connection with a farmer or a place or even a country which is probably not helping that farming community and isn't made with love and care and if that tastes better then you could start exploring okay well i trust these people let me try uh maybe a black tea that i'm going to have hot and let me and you start and a good tea company hopefully will tell you the flavor profiles like oh now i really like dark chocolate or i'm more of a caramel you know or i like more fruity or or it could you go maybe into the greens and it's interesting because green tea is not something that's very common in the u.s at the moment and I've been selling tea in the US for I think about 18 years it's my it's my largest market and I've seen the changes and the shift has gone into green tea but mostly into matcha and there's such a world of green tea in the middle it's like white wine you know there's so much flavor variation and people when they try it they really like it but they're they've had this one industrial experience they've had this cheap bag like a and it wasn't crafted with love it was just crafted for price and volume and it was bitter and dry and it made their mouth pucker like like a cat's bottom you know and they were like no it's not for me i don't like green tea and then but so i think find a tea company that get that you feel confidence in and then try little bits of flavors that you may not love you may not think you like but honestly there's a really good tea you don't have to be a sommelier or a fancy chef to get it if it's really good it's just really good i don't there's no i i did i did have experience to explain this um a red top newspaper you know like a tabloid newspaper in the uk once accused me of selling fancy packaging they said tea's tea you're a charlatan and so i took the journalist from that uh that newspaper very naively um i took them to one of my favorite customers who was a tattoo artist in a very dodgy part of london and it wasn't the kind of place where you get a little swallow on your wrist it was a place where you get like a full face tattoo or you know or a full arm or leg i mean and there were all these they're all the characters all the other tattoo artists i mean the guy was he's sadly now no longer with us but he's called zedler head they call him the dot father he was his studio very famous tattoo guy and he had a full face tattoo and all his guys did and then the customers were also quite heavily tattooed and it looked it looked like a place that you know a nice young lady might not feel comfortable in but you know i knew this i knew zed very well he loved his tea he liked jasmine and silver tip and oolong and and so the the journalist came in with a photographer and they were all talking about how much they loved tea and i did an experiment with a you know big brand uh tea bag against a loose leaf english breakfast that i'd blended myself and we gave it to everybody including the journalist and the photographer and every single person like the good one that i'd made against the other so it doesn't mean that you have to be you know a fancy palette yeah sure sure or i mean or maybe it says something about me where i've just like said that people who have like heavy face tattoos wouldn't have a good palate, which is ridiculous as well. I just like the range of friends you have, yeah. Yeah, tea takes you to so many amazing places, from like duchesses, and I've made tea for our late queen, Elizabeth, many times, and tea cocktails, yeah, to Zedlerhead's studio. Oh my god. Henrietta, I love your life, and I loved talking with you today. Thank you so much for coming by. That's it. Have I been wittering on for that long? No. I didn't let you have a word in anyway, Francis. Are you sure there are? No, it's a great day at work when I didn't have to do anything. Oh, my God. I have so many things I want to say. I'm so sorry. Thank you so much for giving me a voice to be able to say those things. Because I really believe that once people know that there are communities behind the teas that they enjoy and that they can help those communities thrive, that increases their enjoyment. but also they know that there's something small they can do that we can all do to make the world a little bit better. I think especially now when we feel like the world is a little... Well, sometimes I feel like I'm in a parallel universe where I've gone into the upside down or something. Everything seems so strange and everything is changing so fast. We can feel very powerless. There are still these things we can do. We can support amazing farmers in East Africa or Nepal and we can also at the same time flood our lives with pleasure. So it's kind of a very happy story. I love that. Well, thank you, Henrietta. It was a pure joy. Thank you so much, Francis. Henrietta Lavelle is the founder of The Rare Tea Company. You can find her teas at rareteacompany.com. And she left us with a recipe for her cold brew iced tea, which she serves in wine glasses, by the way. That's splendidtable.org. Nick Sharma is always a blast to talk to The former molecular biologist turned food photographer and James Beard Award cookbook author has such a great way of getting people excited to cook. His passion is so infectious, whether he's demystifying the scientific process of cooking or sharing the dynamite flavors of his native India, or both. He's recently joined the fabulous nerds in America's Test Kitchen, as an editor-in-residence and stars in a new video series for them called Flavor Forward. Hey, Nick, it's great to see you. Hi, Francis. It's so good to see you too. And I have to say it's been a little while, but congratulations on your new-ish gig. You are an editor-in-residence in America's Test Kitchen. That sounds, that's such a funny title. It's like, do you live here now? I don't know. But I don't know. You're a scientist. You love this. Maybe you do live in the test kitchen. Oh gosh, I love being in the test kitchen. It's a dream come true because literally everyone is a science nerd in there. Yeah. Well, I love that they're science nerds because they're like cooks first, but you're a scientist and then you're a food nerd after that. So I think it does sound like a perfect match. And I love your new video series with them. It's called Flavor Forward. The food looks fantastic, but I really love how when you're watching the videos. You pepper all these cooking demonstrations with these cool tricks and explain the science of why they work. So I want to spend some time talking with you about some of these videos and some of the recipes and really some of the sort of the magic tricks in them. I know science is not magic. The whole point of science is that it's not magic, but I can't help but say it anyway because it feels like magic sometimes. But let's start with your tandoori salmon. First, actually describe this dish for us. Get us a little excited about it. So this was one of the first dishes I developed at ATK. Oh, cool. And it sounds really simple, you know, when developing a recipe. And I think one of the things with most recipes that are the simplest, they're the hardest to actually develop and get the results. Kind of like khachoyi pepe. It's an easy thing to put together on paper. But when you're making it, you run into all these issues. So tandoori salmon was one of those dishes where I said, you know what, I want to make a tandoori dish for you guys. But how do I get the flavors right? And then I'm also using fish, which is not something that's traditionally used even in India with salmon. I mean, salmon is not a traditional Indian fish to begin with. So and then you've got like me bringing fish to the tandoor. So there were all these complications from the fish being tender. So the proteins kind of denature really fast. How you can bind the flavor in without getting the fish dry. And a tandoor, on the other hand, is this really high heat temperature oven where temperatures go up to 900 degrees. Yeah, yeah. So how do we do all this in the test kitchen? And obviously, no one, I'm not going to expect people to go buy a tandoor oven to make this dish, right? Step one, go buy yourself a tandoor. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of one of those aspirational things, but it's not practical. For sure. So developing this recipe actually turned out to be one of the most fun things I've done in a while. And it started with the fish. I wanted to use salmon because it's a popular fish and also it has fat. So it keeps the fish juicier during cooking. And then how do we get the broiling temperature right? I mean, sorry, how do we get that? I'm giving this away too fast. But how do we recreate the thundur in the house with an oven? because that's what most people will have. And so we figured out broiling is probably the best way to achieve that char. But then with broiling and a protein like fish, because the proteins are so delicate, they squeeze out moisture really fast during cooking. And that makes the fish rubbery. So how do you avoid that? And we came up with this idea of brining the fish because brining is used a lot in cooking. And I started with salt. I put fish in salt solutions. I put fish in baking soda solutions because baking soda is another popular brine that's used commercially with a lot of meat manufacturers. And then the other thing I did was, let's just try a double combo of both salt and baking soda and see how that works. Okay, so the baking soda thing is, I think, probably going to be new for most home cooks, like brining and salt. You know, that makes a lot of sense for us, right? But the baking soda thing is really interesting. So I know adding baking soda to the marinade is sometimes a restaurant trick for beef. Yeah. I personally don't really love it. I feel like I can always tell. Sometimes the beef is like it's tender, but it's like too tender. It's like unnaturally tender. And I also often feel like when I taste it, it makes like the beef is less flavorful for some reason. Maybe I'm making that up. But talk to me about A, what brining and baking soda does and B, how do you avoid it? You know, could it be the same problem if you're brining salmon and baking soda? Could it get too tender and does it disrupt the flavor? Yeah, those are really good questions. And I think like for me, baking soda, I notice it in cookie doughs. Yeah, I hate that flavor. Whenever people put too much baking soda, it feels like this weird metal taste. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just feel it's very unpleasant. So one of the things I know people do with baking soda is shrimp. Because shrimp is another seafood protein that is really sensitive. If you cook it too fast or too long, it gets rubbery and chewy. and no one likes that. Even the smells go off. And so knowing that, I said, why don't we just use this for fish and just see how it works? And so we put the baking soda, made a solution of baking soda. I kept salmon flays directly in it for about 15 minutes at room temperature, left it in there and then took it out. And it was noticeable. The difference in texture was really noticeable. And so I compared it with salt. And here's what's so interesting. So whenever you have a protein, think of it like a wet towel. When you squeeze that wet towel really tightly, a lot of that liquid comes out. So that's how proteins are in meat. You've got these structures that when you twist them and they start to get twisted even more because they're denaturing and changing their physical shape during cooking, all that liquid that's inside is released because it's like a towel that's just dripping all that liquid out. So that's the same thing that we want to avoid with the salmon. And so to do that, the baking soda, what it does, it has sodium in it because it's a salt of sodium carbonic acid. And the sodium adds electric charges to the amino acids on the proteins. And because they're all the same electric charges, life charges repel each other. And so what's happening in this situation... Like a magnet when you're like, the two ends of a magnet when they like force each other apart. Exactly. It's the same thing. Yeah. And so you've got the same electric charges all over the surface now of the protein after it's been exposed to the brining solution. And they start to repel each other. So they can't come back and contract as much. Oh, that's nice. And so that holds the water. It creates these pockets of space that hold water better. So when you're cooking, you don't run through that problem. The second thing coming to... So it doesn't dry out. Yeah. And so, you know, the broiling temperature is quite high. I'm trying to build that char of the tandoor and the fish. This is protecting against it. And then to counteract the flavor problem that you were talking about, I actually ended up rinsing the fish, which I was a little nervous about, but it actually works. So what's happening is in this particular dish, I'm also using beet juice to replicate the red color that a lot of tandoori dishes have. And beet juice. Yeah, it's a food color. Yeah. And so when we were doing the tests, it turns out that beet juice turns a very ugly grayish color with alkaline conditions and baking soda is an alkaline. So it has a higher pH. And so I was losing all this beet juice that I grated and squeezed out and the color was gone. It was turning gray. It tasted great, but it just didn't look like a tandoori dish. Okay. So not only did I have to rinse the fish to get rid of that surface baking soda that was present, I also had to then go back and add lemon juice to neutralize it because that just wasn't enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. This is where the scientist, you know, it works, right? Because you know, the baking soda is a base, right? And like, you know, bases and acids neutralize each other. So that's so smart that like, oh, if that's doing a thing to the beet juice and you had a little lemon juice, a little acid and basically like makes it disappear. Yeah, it was an easy fix. Yeah, such an easy fix. Just brush it off. And then you put the marinade back on, you put the marinade and then stick it into the oven. And that's it. And you still have the juiciness because the proteins have changed enough. There's no baking soda now, no, or rather no high pH on the surface of the fish. Yeah. And you've gotten rid of that. And you've got the red color. Yeah. And so it works out really well. And so the brine is just literally baking soda, salt and water? It's just baking soda and water. Just baking, no salt even. So I did test salt. And when I tested salt, it just squeezed all the water out. It just wasn't effective. And then when I did baking soda with salt in water, it did the same thing. So the effect of the salt was quite demonstrable. So just baking soda water, a short 15 minute brine, rinse it off afterwards, pat it dry and maybe even just like a little lemon juice to kind of neutralize what's on the surface to get rid of the flavor. So cool. See, I love this. This is like an incredible nerdy tree. I love it. And then in your particular recipe for this, you put on this beautiful spice paste and then you just throw it in the broiler. So a tandoor is a super intense hot oven. Heat comes from the bottom. And usually things cooked in the tandoor are either, if it's bread, like non, it's slapped to the side of the wall, right? Or usually you have to use long, basically like skewers. Yeah. And so, like you said, like the tandoor is so hot. It's also heat's coming from the bottom, but it's also being reflected from the sides of the oven. And usually, traditionally, they're made of clay. The more modern ones you see in restaurants will use stainless steel. So there's a lot of heat that's going back and forth, which creates this amplified effect. So things cook fast. They burn. A part of that burning is the flavor that tandoor is known for. Even with naan, you want that burn on the bread on the back. Yeah. And so I had to recreate that. And so broiling was the easiest way to do it at a much lower temperature. But you just move it slightly closer to the heating element on top. So I think on average, I use usually between six to eight inches from the top broiling element. And it works really well. Nick Sharma is editor-in-residence at America's Test Kitchen and is author of Veg Table. We'll be back with more with him in just a minute. I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from American Public Media. I'm Francis Lam, and you're listening to The Splendid Table. We're talking with Nick Sharma at America's Test Kitchen. Let's get back to it with him. Let's jump to another dish. There's this really cool one. It's a one-pot dish, one-pan dish, rather. lemon braised chicken with pearl couscous um so already i'm like psyched for this because it's like chicken you know with lemon three ways you have zest juice and preserved lemon already sounds delicious but i want to start with the marinade step again actually um because here's another like magical texture question you start the video with a comment about how lemon juice in a marinade can tenderize meat. But if you go too far, it can ruin the texture. So talk to us about that and why it works and why it can ruin the texture. Like why do you have to be careful doing it? Yeah. So in cooking, we use a lot of cooking acids, but the three primary ones are vinegar, which is acetic acid. The second one is citric acid, which is lemon juice, which is present in lemon juice. And the third one is lactic acid. What's interesting is that the last... Yeah. And so the last two acids, lactic acid and citric acids are the only ones that are synthesized by cells, by animal cells. Vinegar is something that is synthesized during fermentation by bacteria or yeast. And so it's not something that animal tissue is exposed to on a normal basis. If you do see acetate, which is vinegar in like in an animal in the blood, it's indicating some kind of malfunction that the animal is sick. And so the tissue is not used to it. Right. And so that was my logic behind this is that you know one of the things when people talk about cooking acids and marinating them too long there always this general statement that thrown that don marinate it too long because the surface of the meat will start to get crumbly because it denaturing on the surface and you get this unpleasant texture on the meat But it turns out it's not true. And vinegar is the one where you see this effect. I see. Predominantly. Just because animal tissue has not evolved to deal with acetic acid, which is vinegar. Okay, okay, okay. Citric acid is synthesized by animals, but it is present inside the mitochondria and it rarely gets out. When it does, animal tissues can handle it. Lactic acid is something that you see in the blood, especially if you have muscles. It's produced in the muscles predominantly and you see it in the blood. So again, that's another acid. So these two acids, they are a little more gentle on meat. And so I use that logic to develop the marinade. So I'm using citric acid. I don't, you can keep it for a few, you don't even actually have to marinate the chicken. It's pretty flavorful on its own. So you can just mix everything. Yeah. And then just like slap it onto the grill or whatever you're cooking it in a skillet or a pan and it'll be fine. But if you want more flavor from the aromatics that are present in the marinade, leave it overnight and you will get better permeation of those flavors. And the other thing that I did was this chicken has skin on and I love chicken with skin on because the fat also adds like this extra layer of juiciness. It protects the meat from getting denatured too far along in these kind of dishes. Yeah. So, okay, you marinate in this like lemon. I mean, there's a lot of different ingredients in the marinade, but basically like, you know, lemon is doing the tenderizing work that you're talking about and lemon can be absorbed by the meat, which is cool. You sear the chicken, do that thing where you sear the chicken, obviously it gets nice and brown. You take it out and then you cook pro couscous in the pan. And pearl couscous is basically like a pasta, right? It's almost like a pasta ball. Yeah, it's extruded. Yeah. And then you put the chicken on top. So people love a one-pan dish. Yeah. I have to be honest with you. I get so nervous cooking rice or couscous, like this pasta, with the meat on top. Because I'm maniacal about not overcooking the rice. I hate overcooked rice. I hate overcooked pasta so much. So I get so nervous, like this idea, like, and then you put it all together and you cook it together. Like, how are you so confident? How do I get the confidence? Okay, so one thing about working at ATK now for over a year is that they're very stringent on everything, including the type of pan you use. So when we were making the video, I remember I couldn't switch to another pan because it literally does change cooking times, like you mentioned. So if you use a cast iron skillet and the recipe is tested with that, just stick to it. Okay. Because if you think about even your cooking dishes, cast iron is, first of all, it's an alloy of iron, right? So you've got metal in there. And it's a dark metal, so it absorbs heat faster. It also retains heat quite differently from, say, a clear stainless steel pan. So you need to start thinking about these things. So the cooking time changes because of the amount of heat that's being retained, amount of heat absorbed. And I think that's where a lot of these like one pan cooking dishes, the timing start to change and overcooking or undercooking because you've just essentially changed the main thing that's holding it all together. And so the amount of heat and cooking time begins to change. OK, so the answer to why you're so confident is because I did this 25 times. Just follow the recipe. Yeah, just follow the recipe stick to. OK, so my my nervousness around like finish cooking on top of the rice is still founded. There's no magic trick to get around that. Also, another good thing about this recipe, coming back to a little bit of the physics, there's a lot of water in this pan because we're cooking the couscous. So there's moisture from there. We've also got the chicken thighs that we're adding back along with any juices from the pan. The, you know, that came off with the chicken, we're adding it back to the pan and you're covering it. A good thing about couscous and the chicken, because it's sealed with the lid, water never goes above a certain temperature. It never goes above the boiling point. So the risk of it drying out is also really low. Okay. Yeah, so you're partially steaming it too, which is nice. Yeah. Cool. Let me get to one more dish. Because this is such a simple one. It's funny because we've talked about these really thoughtful marinating techniques and brining techniques. And you have a video that's like, crack open a can of beans. It's going to be really good. so this is actually very simple very like home cook friendly you have a calabrian chili stewed white beans with almond romesco and i think the romesco is really to me the star of this dish i think romesco is a super under heralded sauce condiment i don't know what would you call it it's it's kind of like a dip because saucy condiment in this case you're using as a flavor base. Talk to us about Romesco. Okay. I love condiments. I think in my refrigerator, I will probably have no food cooked, but I'll have condiments. And so Romesco is one of those things where you can pull it out and you can use it in a million different ways. And also it's another condiment that you can make in a million different ways. I'm using almonds in there just to give it body and a little bit of texture. And I roast the peppers and the tomatoes and the shallots and the onions in this dish just to build the body of that sauce. You have that caramelization, the miyar taking place in there. So you build the body of the sauce. And then I'm using it to reframe the narrative on canned beans. I do like canned beans. It's not that I hate them, but I also like them. They're kind of bland, to be honest, right? Like beans, if you taste them, they've got that buttery texture if they're cooked well. But then beyond that, there's really nothing. And so it needs that lift. And the romesco is what does that for me. So it was just such a fun thing to do. And what I love about this dish is that you can make the romesco ahead of time, keep it in. When you're ready, just pull it all together and toss it and it's done. It's just such a fun dish. Yeah. So the romesco, like you said, there's red peppers, there's tomatoes, you char them in the broiler. Once again, the broiler is the secret hero of your kitchen. And then you just like, and you make it almost like a food processor pesto, right? You put those vegetables into a food processor, almonds, you put Parmesan cheese in yours, which is not traditional, but I mean, who's going to be mad about that? It's delicious. And then you kind of like just blitz it all together with some olive oil. And, you know, it's a super flavorful, like you said, it could be a dip. It could be a condiment in this case. you crack open a can of beans and some vegetable stock and you just stir a bunch of it in and it becomes sort of its own broth. I do have one science question that you sort of bring up in this recipe also. Oh, garlic. There's garlic in the romesco, right? And even though you're putting it all in a food processor, you make a point of chopping the garlic before putting in the food processor because the flavor is different. Yeah. So this is a really interesting question. it's a simple thing that makes a huge difference when testing the recipe i first started because i'm a lazy cook i love throwing everything into the blender yeah i love it because you just throw everything in a blender and then you get the smooth thing and call it a day right but when i first tested with garlic i threw full garlic cloves in there and i said oh it's getting mellowed what can we do without increasing the amount of garlic but get that garlic kick to it because the Calabrian chilies are pretty strong in that dish. Calabrian chilies are another fermented ingredient and that needs something to stand against. And garlic is, the flavor from garlic comes from the cells. There's an enzyme in there called alanase, which breaks down when garlic is cut. It's also present in onions. When you cut them, the cells are broken. This enzyme comes out and it reacts with chemicals that are present inside the garlic, which creates these aromatic sulfur compounds. So it was such a simple fix. If I chop the garlic, it's going to have more cells broken, which means more enzyme is released. And that enzyme has time to produce those sulfur compounds that I want, those flavor compounds. If I put it into a food processor directly, the pH of what's all of those things in there is going to denature the enzyme because enzymes are protein so that alanase doesn't really get a chance to do its thing. So you don't get those flavor molecules. So just chopping it beforehand and then putting it into the blender, I'll get the extra flavor, that extra texture I'm looking out for. And then even the recipe has olive oil. And so the olive oil, a lot of those sulfur compounds, they get dissolved in the olive oil because they're fat soluble and it holds on to it. And it was such a simple thing that made a huge difference in the flavor of this from Esco. Okay, this is awesome because I have wondered this for so long and you just explained this very simple way, which is basically the garlic, a clove of garlic contains the elements that create garlic flavor. But the garlic itself, that flavor doesn't exist yet. It doesn't exist yet. You have to cut the garlic so that those components combine to create garlic flavor. And if you throw it in the food processor and you whir it all up, it's basically shearing the garlic but immediately dispersing everything and the enzyme is being eliminated by the acids or whatever. So it doesn't actually create the garlic flavor. So you chop it first to create garlic flavor, then add it in. Yeah, absolutely. You're just not giving it a chance. And we do this. We actually do this, the opposite of it, with pickled onions. And even when people chop onions and you don't want that bite, we tell people soak it in cold water just to get rid of. It's the same thing. You're basically denaturing or deactivating that enzyme from or diluting it away from doing anything. And it's such a simple fix. what maybe like a few seconds it's worth it yeah but just like knowing that knowledge it's like oh that like totally can change the way you approach and that's why like oh and like it's funny because people think of italian food as being a very garlicky cuisine but then if you like watch italian chefs cook oftentimes they like they treat the garlic very gently like you might like lightly crush the garlic clove or not crush it at all and just put it in a pan of oil and then they take the garlic clove out they don't even serve the garlic right and it's like oh that's that's a way to add garlic but minimize the garlic versus what you're showing us chop it up first and that's a way to maximize the garlic it's so amazing so cool so interesting yeah i think um it's like you said like in different cuisines it's really interesting just to see how chefs and cooks control flavor development yeah even a motor and pestle you crush garlic in a motor and pestle some of if it's made of marble your motor and pestle it's marble is calcium carbonate that's going to neutralize some of those flavors also, because a lot of that is acidic. Oh my God, it's amazing. Oh God, you are in the right place, man. I can't believe you spend all day in the lab just tinkering, learning this stuff. Well, Nick, this has been such a blast. Thank you so much. It's always fun to be on the splendid table with you, Francis. Thank you for having me. Nick Sharma is an editor in residence at America's Test Kitchen and host their video series, Flavor Forward. He's also the author of Veg Table, The Flavor Equation, and A Brown Table. He shared his recipes for tandoori salmon, Calabrian chili white beans with almond robesco, and lemon braised chicken with couscous. Find the link to them at splendidtable.org. Well, that is our show for this week. We hope you enjoyed it, and we'll talk to you again next week. Be sure to check out our free and amazing newsletter called Weeknight Kitchen. We share a new recipe every week from the best and brightest food writers working today. And when you sign up, one lucky person a month wins a copy of a brand new cookbook from this season's crop. Go to splendidtable.org slash giveaway. Subscribe to our podcast, and we have a lot happening on our YouTube channel. Head over there to see some of the video behind our audio, including extended interviews with guests, videos from our live shows, and more. The Splendid Table was created by Sally Swift and Lin Rosetto Casper and was made this week by technical producer Jennifer Lukey producers Eric Romero and Maria Wartell and managing producer Sally Swift Jordan Turgeon is our digital producer our intern is Ruby Sigmund and Lauren Humbert is our senior podcast production manager thank you for listening I'm Francis Lam and this is APM American Public Media