Behind the Scenes of “Top Chef” with Kristen Kish

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So go subscribe at Christopherkimble.substack.com. One more time, Christopherkimble.substack.com. This is most of your radio from Pierre Exemier, host Christopherkimble. Tonight's my interview with Top Chef Host Kristen Kish. She reveals what she really thinks about diners who behave badly. Don't stack the plates. Just don't stack the plates.

“I just I hate it so much. Wait, diners stack the plates. Diners stack the plates because they think”

they're being helpful and they kind of push it off to the side because they're like, "oh, we don't want these dirty dishes in front of us anymore." Plus, she shares stories from Top Chef including her winning mushrooms. I sweat down some aromatics, garlic shallots, thyme, deglaze with a little bit of vermouth, finished with some butter, cherry vinegar, fresh parsley, salt pepper, perfect. I want $10,000 for those by the way.

And you deserve every dollar. Thank you. Kristen Kish speaks out that's coming up later

in the show. But first I'm joined by Raya Hart. She recently wrote an essay for the Atlantic

about eating and traveling on tour with her father, grateful dead drummer, Mickey Hart. Raya, welcome to Milk Street. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. I promised not to sing any dead songs, talk about all the concerts I went to. So I'll spare you all of that which you've heard a thousand times. I will just say that my first concert was February 1970, Second Show Filmories. Wow. And pig pen was still there.

That's a great time to get on the bus. I'm happy for you that you made it in 1970. That's great. And I met your dad. I may have met you too. About 12 or 14 years ago. I used to cook for Bob with his band Ratthaw. Oh wow. That was just a centrum. So could you just talk about the reality of traveling with a dead with your dad being in the band? Yeah. Well, I can't tell you

when I started, but probably maybe a month after I was born really, really little. And basically

my entire life I spent touring in the summers and taking off school or going on breaks on the road. And a lot of people would imagine backstage as a kid to be like a really chaotic place. But for me, there's a lot of sameness and repetition and consistency. And as everything kind of changed outside in the world going on the road was pretty much the same. And we all got to come back together. We all got to hear the music again. And that's been kind of a constant comfort through my life.

I saw the saw, you know, Bob we're had his own room and Mickey had his room and people were doing different things. It seemed like, you know, backstage, everybody had their family or they had their friends. But the whole band wasn't sitting down so much and talking to each other at least at that time I was there. So did that change? Like sometimes the whole band would sit there after a concert and talk or smoke something or have something to eat or you sort of stayed a part for a lot of

“the backstage. Yeah, I mean, I think especially after the show, we're definitely in our own”

worlds. But between sound check and the time that the band walks, there is time for us to all be together. And I think that really only happens when we're eating and around food and in catering is really the only time that all of the members of the crew, band members, everyone gets to spend time together. So I'd love one of my favorite things was Jerry's contract writer about the refreshments, three bottles of good French red wine, one and a half cases of

hijackens, four quarts of orange juice, no sugar added, bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches and I love this and good cheeseburgers, cigarettes, Bacardi Lightroom. So was this a standard writer so that everywhere you went it was pretty much an unchanging list of requirements. Yeah, pretty much. It stays for a tour. So a writer will make adjustments to it kind of tour by tour but it's pretty

we're taking whatever is on the writer and it comes on our bus with us and then becomes anytime we're not at the venue what we're eating as well. So you're five or six years old it's

“your birthday you're on the road on tour what happens on the road. Yeah, I mean I think one thing”

about being a kid on the road is that it's very difficult to make your own decisions about food or find your own food you're really relying on people all of the time and I had this really intense

craving for cheesecake one year and rempt up this birthday cake moment where I would finally get

the cheesecake that I had been fantasizing about and my mom came to give me my birthday cake and it was chocolate but I had found a plastic bag of craft cheese on the catering table so I hid the cheese underneath my shirt I carried the chocolate cake underneath the stage and poured the cheese on top of it and then made my own cheesecake and for me it was really a finding of my independence and my own ability to be self-sufficient and was a huge growing up moment for me really looking

back. You mentioned sometimes summer all of you would go out to eat I guess so what were some of the favorite places to eat around the country when you had an eye-dough? Oh God well I talk about

in my article WoHOP which is like the first and foremost go to of all time Madison Square Garden

and WoHOP or like the same place in my home. WoHOP is a really cool old school Chinatown institution it's the second oldest Chinese restaurant in New York and WoHOP has been a tradition since way before I was born my dad used to go there with Belushi when he was in this band the stink band with him and a bunch of the other SNL cast members. Still open today. Still open today but not all night like it used to be.

It used to be we would show up at WoHOP after a show at two in the morning and know everybody in there. Did some of these people who kept coming to concerts? Did they become sort of VIPs

“in some way they got access backstage or was there a special group of people?”

Oh yeah absolutely I mean all of the people really that work for us are that I depend on now isn't adult years and years after Jerry died or people who started touring with the grateful that when they were kids like my dad's assistant was like my second mother got a handwritten note from Jerry Garcia backstage of the film where he used to when she was 15 years old that said let this girl in she needs to be here and now 50, 60 years later she's a part of my

family you know so I think there's a lot of stories like that of people who just dedicated their whole lives to this thing. Are you post Jerry or were you born before he died? No I was born before Jerry died a few years before Jerry died and you remember anything about him at the time or you're just too young? Well I remember him to be completely honest with you I remember him being kind of an ominous figure because he had his big beard and you know kind of big person and we used

to take the same limo to the gigs together we always shared a limo and I was kind of frightened by

him he was like a Santa Claus type figure that was somehow you know intimidating to be what I was little and he was such a sweetheart he used to put a towel over his head for the entire drive so I wouldn't cry and would still cry for that still do the whole thing and just cover up his head so that I wouldn't be freaked out because he was an incredibly sweet caring person. Tell me about

“your dad what was it like growing up on the road with him how do you do fatherhood on the road?”

I mean I got really lucky because I was born after the kind of madness of the 80s and I got to really spend a ton of ton of time with him I mean my dad and I are really really close but he's a prankster he really has a hard time taking things seriously he likes to kind of subvert expectations and mess with people which I think is super fun too and we play you know we don't get hung up on stuff. You say that after the last show you can now eat what you want so as soon as you got off the road

you could go really eat some Thai food or eat something else or what was craft services like. I mean it was pretty consistent but less than it being about the food being the same it's really about being able to make your own decisions and it can be a great thing it can be a freeing thing but for me it kind of feels really lonely and weird and just a big shift when you're finally going home after those experiences when you're finally not having a road manager say oh that's

the gate you need to walk to or this is the time that you have to like go run to the bathroom if you

want it feels strange it's like free falling a little I like being able to choose what I eat I

“like being able to have long luxurious meals that you know involve friends and other people but I”

also like the sense of community and the sense of purpose that you get from being in the situation like we are on the road where it's like eat this now now move to the next thing now do this you know it's it's both I feel both ways about it. Ray I spend a pleasure visiting once again with a grateful dad and Mickey and you thank you. Thank you so much Chris it's been great to be here. That was Ray a heart her essay for the Atlantic is what the band eats now I'm joined by

my co-host Sarah Malton to answer a few of your cooking questions Sarah is of course the star Sarah's weeknight meals on public television her latest book is Home Cooking 101 so you probably spend some time on like Instagram I'm sure I'm amazed at the breadth of the food videos on that and impressed I'm really impressed is there something you've seen this year in a food video that was amazing memorable that really stood out for you that would be true if I

watched a lot of food videos I mainly watched dog videos and mainly dogs and so I could talk about

that but you don't wait wait you never look at people cooking on YouTube or Instagram or

mostly not I really try to get away from it so yeah dogs some of the baking you see is just amazed tell me some of them well the ones I like are people who they have a simple recipe it's well done they're not putting on airs and it's just a practical recipe that makes sense there's all this talent out there and the great thing social media is not it gives people an opportunity to share it and some of it's garbage but a lot of it's actually I am really impressed by their cooking skills

well I'm going to have to start watching some of it anyway all right let's take a call welcome to Milk Street who's calling hi my name is David for a Madison Wisconsin how can we help you I've been making my own pizza dough for a little while now on my use the recipe from Roberta's that the New York Times has posted but I usually end up freezing the dough just out of convenience and so I make it ship it into balls and freeze it and then I take it out put it in the

refrigerator a couple days before I'm going to use it and then usually let it sit out on my counter for oh maybe an hour or so before I actually make the pizzas but my question is it comes out fine but I notice that it just isn't quite as like risen or light and airy as dough that's I've made freshly or dough that I've bought like from a local Italian market so my question is if you know

“you're going to freeze it do you need to you know either increase the amount of yeast or decrease”

amount of salt or do anything along those lines to help it sort of cook better you take it out of the freezer put in the fridge for a day or two what happens to the size of the dough after two days in the fridge how much bigger does it get I would say it probably almost doubles are you putting

it in the fridge before the first proof that as you just mix the dough you've needed it and it goes in the

freezer the recipe has you let it rise for like about 15 minutes in between needing it for two rounds of that but yeah essentially most of the rise of that would be after I've taken it out of the freezer well a couple thoughts it could be we actually tested this if the dough doesn't get up to about 75 degrees before you bake it it's not going to be a very active dough if you haven't the fridge and take it out it'll take a lot longer than 30 minutes because that

dough is like 38 or 40 degrees right you take it out and it's going to take a lot more than half

“an hour to get it from 40 degrees to 75 so I think what could be happening is your dough is still”

cold the yeast is not that active you don't have a lively dough and you're throwing it in a hot oven or on the grill whatever and it's just not going to puff up that much so I would definitely get an history thermometer and make sure that dough's up over 70 degrees and I find that makes a huge difference in the texture and the amount of rise you get in the oven and puffiness and chew as well so I think that's your problem you know I make pizza dough all the time and let it sit in the fridge

yeah is this recipe have a small amount of yeast and it's a long slow process or it's more yeah I guess that's my question because the recipe only calls for two grams of yeast which they're saying that works out to be three quarters of a teaspoon and that recipe has it sit in the fridge for two or three days yeah yeah it's either 24 hours or leave it out of room temperature for three to four hours the way I do it is half a teaspoon of yeast I like a fairly hydrated dough

so more like 75% to 80% water you know needed etc put in the fridge for three days that's ideal taking out shaping into balls and let it sit until it comes up to over 70 degrees and then

“you're good to go the freezing should not affect anything one way or the other I think pizza dough”

freezes pretty well but I think the problem is that does not warm it up and I give it a full

three days in the fridge just to develop but Sarah no I listen you're the pizza maven and that all makes complete sense to me I think that's the problem but try the three-day thing because I think that actually works really well okay well thank you both very much I love the show and I love you guys and I appreciate the tips thanks very much yeah thanks for all bye bye this is Milk Street Radio Sarah and I are here to answer your toughest questions give us a ring eight five five four two six nine eight four three or email us

at questions at Milk Street Radio.com welcome to Milk Street who's calling hi this is Katie hi Katie where are you calling from I'm calling from San Francisco oh you lucky person you how can we help you today well is that the farmers market the other day and I I bought had a celery with the most celery leaves

“I've ever seen and I was wondering if there's any more that I could do with them other than just using them”

with the garnish you could use them in anything you use celery in you could put them in egg salad you could put them in tuna salad potato salad you could add them to a stew you know anywhere you'd use celery and another thing that might be fun especially if they're large and sometimes they are is to batter them and fry them shallow fry them like in a tempura batter oh that's a really good idea and then sprinkle them with salt that would be like a fun order of the glass of wine

I'm always thinking about what would be nice for the glass of wine oh you and me both

Chris what do you think what I would do is chop them up and I would use them every time you saute or any time you saute onions to start a recipe which is most recipes I would just throw a bunch of them in with the onions because they have a really lovely I think the flavor celery is one of my favorite subtle flavors and the leaves have a lot of flavor so I would just chop them up and throw it in as part of your so-free dough right and then you know go on with a recipe and you'll

“have that little additional flavor and you get to use it up so that's what I would do”

that's a great idea I was curious if you haven't seen anything sort of akin to like almost like a pesto then which you would use celery leaves or anything along those lines sure sure it's funny

people think pesto's basil but pesto there's a million pesto's sure you could use celery leaves

and pesto why not I think that would be great with fine nuts and parm yeah we're a lot of whatever I mean almonds we work fine yeah you know you could use any different kinds of tar cheeses and well not to be great celery leaves yeah or you could mix it with something else like parsley a lot of parsley pesto's you could mix it with celery really sure the two things I think have great flavor as a background flavor leaks and celery those are the two things that really

people don't think about I just made a leg a lamb and I put you know a couple onions in with a skin's on I caught a garlic couple heads of garlic and half with a skin's on through it and you know a bunch of celery with a leaves and through that and some leaks you know all that stuff and then you just strain out the juices at the end and defat them and now you have his lovely sauce yeah sure that sounds delicious well thank you both yeah thank you okay all right Katie

take care bye welcome to milk straight who's calling hi there this is Angie I live in Seattle hi and she how can we help you today I have been baking sourdough for a little while and I'm still kind of working out the kinks and part of that I've been trying to figure out what kind of equipment works best you know I had a bunch of stuff from goodwill that I just used for general cooking and my flour would spill all over the place and my bowl wasn't the right shape so I've been kind

of like looking into what people use for sourdough baking and I am really curious about those wooden dobles that I see at like antique stores a lot it seems like they're around enough that maybe they were a standard at some point when people make a lot of bread and so I'm curious what those were

know that was something that was used and it was passed down from generation to generation and what was so good about them is that you could mix the dough in the bowl and then cover it with the damp towel and let it rise and it would keep its heat covered and so the counter wouldn't get dirty it really is a good tool for the job the trouble is as hard to find them you know as you said

“you can find them sometimes at flea markets but you'd want to clean it I believe online there's”

directions about how to do like a vinegar bath and dry it out and then you want to rub it with mineral oil you know like you do a cutting board afterwards I think there's a place a new hamster that sells new ones we should say they're oblong and they're deep and the rustic looking they're sort of cool they're cool yeah I actually am interested in woodworking too so I was like oh I could make one of those but maybe there's a reason that nobody uses them anymore my approach now

is to do the folds in a bowl instead of on a counter and it doesn't work that well for it that's interesting that is exactly what people are doing with it I don't think it's about mass so much as I think it was designed specifically for needing I would think yeah right why is it oblong it must be oblong for a reason so I think it has to do with it's designed to make needing

easier so I think anyway it's an excellent question I've never thought about this and now I'm

“fascinated yeah yeah maybe you have to start to know you do bread baking I want to try it now yeah”

yeah try to get a hold on great question I'm gonna go on my one oh no I think that's really it'll be fun right now I'm getting online okay all right all right well thank you so much yeah okay bye bye you're listening to Milk Street Radio coming up we're getting real with top chef host Kristen Kish this is most of your radio I'm your host Christopher Kimball right now it's my interview with Kristen Kish she won top chef in 2012 and became the show's host in 2023 she just

published her memoir accidentally on purpose Kristen welcome to most streets hi Chris thanks for having me let's start with who you are as if not everybody knows everyone does but you went to court on blue you worked with Barbara Lynch in Boston just tell us a little bit about your your Boston years sure I mean my Boston years were probably the most formidable life altering years that I've had I was there for about 10 years working in kitchens and restaurants you know I'd say that my chef

part of me my professional self certainly grew the most in Boston and I really started to find who I was and how I wanted to cook so let's talk about Montan in Boston this was Barbara Lynch's very high in very big white plates yeah I'd say Barbara tell me this was you know why shouldn't

Boston have a kind of upscale yeah New York style restaurant but I always thought it was

unlike star or sportello or number nine part or other restaurants it felt I don't know a little out of place for Boston so tell me about working there about the food what what was the story of Montan you know I was working at stir for a couple years and during that time that's when I went out to top chef and I'd come back and you know the show played out I wanted all the things you know life started to happen and Barbara came to me and whether it was her trying to find you know

way to put more eyes on Montan or whether it was purely just for the benefit of me or a combination of both she came to me and she said you know by the time you're 30 I want you to have chef cuisine over a relationship or property on your resume I want that for you and so that

kind of really started the wheels turning um she is always advocated for me and for all the places

that I never felt like I belonged or where I was not welcome she got me into those rooms and you know Montan in relationship oh yeah so maybe a little bit out of place ahead of its time but you know one that definitely carried a lot of lessons you know working there was a challenge it wasn't the easiest kitchen I don't think that everyone wanted me in that role Barbara and a few others did but a lot of the company did not feel like it was mine to have and that

made it really difficult and I only lasted about nine months there so what's it like walking to kitchen when a lot of people there don't think you have the chops or of earned it that the boss has brought you in and I assume I assume working in a kitchen is highly can be divisive it can be political it can be lots of things how did you manage that well what was the like

“living through this nine months you know manage it I don't know if that's what I'd call it”

I think it was survival more than anything I went in and very quickly I was

let a lot of things happening behind my back nothing was overly like in my face which also made

“it really hard it almost was like a kind of gaslighting because I couldn't pinpoint why but”

through some trusted cooks one in particular that really was my eyes in my ears she would start coming to me and telling me all the things that they were saying and doing behind my back whether that be changing my menu or making fun of my food or just being just like bullies and there was one rumor that floated around and said I only got the job because I was having a relationship with Barbara and now oh Lord yeah so like not only being a woman in the kitchen being like gay

and already feeling unworthy of being in there and then you like pile all that stuff on it's just it was a lot but I you know I gotta say as tough as it was I tried to work harder work smarter being nicer that didn't really help me it didn't it didn't solve the problem but I was strong enough at you know at nine months to say you know what this like enough is enough yeah I guess you know it's like being captain of a ship and you know you you have a lot of people who don't really

appreciate you I'm saying but Barbara going back to her second you know I've known her for many years

and she's also been known in Boston for having a really loyal cadre of people working for her over very long periods of time but then of course in 2023 there are articles in there times and elsewhere detailing accusations by employees so you know I don't know would you say she was still someone who is a great mentor and teacher to you during that time you know I will preface this all by saying I don't describe it anyone else's experience with her back over a

decade ago me working for her she changed my life like personally professionally she changed my life and she definitely was ahead of a lot of different things and she was my very first mentor true mentor and one that I still consider a mentor today so let's talk about top chef I know a lot of people are interested in what happens behind the scenes but I'm also interested in why you did it because I know from reading your book it's pretty different than what it looks like on

television so how did it work and what was it like you know I didn't want to do it I am deeply introverted socially anxious uh best case scenario I could move through this world and no one thinks I'm a weirdo television was not made for a person like me barbro came to me and said you know what they're asking for more women and they are asking for recommendations I might have from the company I put your name in and I was like you got to be out you're like no absolutely

not I'm the one my hand was shaking so bad on my first day at stir that I nicked my finger trying to carve a chicken so like don't put me on television this is absurd and she was like you

“know I I really think you need to go long story short I just kept saying yes until I was like”

I want to say no but I never said no and I just kept getting further and further in the production

it's a wild adventure but it was the right time and barbro truly advocated for me like my resume was a sous chef at a ten-seat restaurant I had no nominee award things I had no write-ups no and wrote a single thing about me or my food and there I am in this room with these people and these other chefs and she told producers like trust me don't go for resume like you've got to trust me I know she can win and so knowing that going in I felt pressure not to disappoint her or embarrass

myself but the thing about cooking whether there's a television set or a camera in your face when you start to cook and that this is what I do everything kind of just goes away like everything starts to fade away and I could focus on the challenge at hand which I think was really helpful for me so obviously you had it in you but do you think you had to change in some way because of top chef I mean what what happened to get you from an introvert to being a host of a major TV show?

Well I'm very much still an introvert my time before going on camera and my time after are in deep silence by myself recharging I know what it takes for me to be on for 12 hours so I manage my life around it it's like preparing for any job or any sporting event like you

“need to be the best version of yourself for your job but that doesn't mean you have to be that all”

the time I will say that going on and hosting top chef I am still very much me I am a little bit more talkative I find ways to like project that don't feel necessarily natural to me but I you know

too before I started top chef excellent idea yeah I find what's really important I think is the ability to go through the camera to the person watching and making a connection with that person yes it's about connection you're right and I think that has nothing to do at all with your regular personality how do I put this it's not the people necessarily like you I'm talking about my self right now is that because people like you think they can kind of like find you annoying

“but you you connect there's a connection made and I think that's why Hollywood always used to do”

screen tests because people in their normal life just doesn't seem like they'd be good at it and you you put them up on the screen all of a sudden there's electricity and I think obviously you have that but I'm not sure where that comes from maybe you just bored with it or not I'm not sure I think it's compassion it's compassion for that's interesting that for the chefs that are standing there I once was them left everything that's a good point you know you walk away from your

business your life your spouses your partners and how long did you have how long is this process for top chef it's about eight weeks so how how do people I mean I couldn't possibly go away for a week to do something not that anyone would invite me to do it but how how do people do that well you you have to make sure you have a really great team at home but there is a greater purpose

“for the rest of your life eight weeks is a small chunk of time god willing that we all have on”

this earth so for eight weeks you can change your life and have an opportunity that for the remaining years of your life far of longer than eight weeks will help carry you through I will say it's not without challenge it is very difficult when I went on competing I was not married I can't imagine not talking to my wife or having like supervised telephone conversations just big how you do and you know like that feels really bizarre but you know there's a greater purpose when you go on

so what else did you cook on top chef in what worked out whether any do you have any failures along the way for example you know I cooked a lot of great things that I was proud of some that I look back on TV and I'm like oh my god but like it's a marker of time you know I won

several challenges my very first challenge that I won was simply cooking mushrooms and frying onions

and I was like okay like this isn't going to get me anywhere but sure let's just scoop by on this episode and it secured me my first win okay so how do you cook mushrooms and win um so regular white button mushrooms I love them I de-stem them put them on a grill sheet I put them in an oven about 325 and I let them cook for about 35 minutes depending and all that moisture releases then I take those mushrooms I put them in a colander I cover them up I let them continue to steam and reach out

any other moisture that they have then I take them I dry them really really well with paper towel and then I sweat down some aromatics garlic shallots time you add the mushrooms oil you get nice caramelization deglaze with a little bit of vermouth finished with some butter sherry vinegar fresh parsley salt pepper perfect yeah that sounds good I won $10,000 for those by the way and you deserve every dollar thank you so let's say by restaurants are there things you think

restaurants just should never do I mean it's sort of like if they do this then you've lost the

customer are there things you've seen chefs do restaurants do as a diner that are just no nose that kind of ruin the experience for you you know I will say I don't like when people get pushy on me and I don't like when I feel like I'm being obsolete there is this one instance I went to a restaurant in Austin and I sat at the bar with my wife and we had ordered food and ordered what we wanted all the food came the manager came up and he said you know you've really got to try our

lamb I said I hate lamb like lamb lamb lamb and smoke salmon you're not going to get me to eat he's like no no no like trust me you got to try the lamb I was like I sort I don't want the lamb and my wife is trying me and she doesn't like lamb she's not going to like your lamb he was they know to our lamb's the best and after a certain point I was just like fine to give me the lamb lamb so the lamb comes I take a bite who's like best lamb I put it down I said yeah still

don't like lamb okay fine that would all be fine and then he gives us the bill and the lamb is on

the bill oh no that lost me I will never go back to that restaurant over again so okay let's flip the

“tables you're the chef I'm the diner there are a couple of rules the you should give diners just”

things you should definitely do or not do you need to voice if something is not to your liking

if you're chicken is you feel it's overseas and whether I believe it's is or not like we're going

to make it to your liking if you just let us have that chance like we didn't purposely send you out

“something that you don't like why would we do that bad business so I think that there's a responsibility”

to say if something's out to your liking um don't stack the plates just don't stack the plates I just I hate it so much um wait diners stack the diners stack the plates because they think what being helpful and they kind of push it off to the side because they're like oh we don't want these dirty dishes in front of us anymore I'm like hold on they're your dirty dishes first of all and we will have our team come get them like in a timely manner but like the stacking and pushing

them off to the side is if there are a new thing I've never seen anything to do that gosh yes it happens

there's another thing that when I get up from a table I always fold my napkin I fold my napkin I push my chair it really bothers me and again and maybe this is just a me thing I don't know

“but like when you're done eating and you get up and you're just like throw your napkin on the table it”

feels like like I know that's not what it means and you don't have to fold your dirty napkin for us just to put it in the laundry but it's the thing it's like going to someone's house you don't leave dirty appetizer napkins all over the house see I knew it I knew if we saw a lot of we'd find your thing this is your wrist and this is your thing folding napkins I would say one other thing in defense of your industry you know I have immense respect for the weight people

because it's just such a hard job but I would say have some empathy for the people serving you because they're dealing with difficult people frequently and hospitality is really hard but so I would just say have some sympathy for the people serving you well also I also think it's you know like if your food is dragging and your course is 10 minutes late the job of my floor manager and server is to come and just make sure like you know that we're on it please don't

get mad at your server it's not their fault it's likely probably my kitchen or me that like mess something up like we're at the end of the day humans trying to do a perfect job that's impossible to do perfectly Kristen it's been this been fun thank you I really enjoyed talking to you thank you well thank you I just met one of my culinary heroes Chris so thank you very much for having me take care that was Kristen Kesher memoir is accidentally on purpose speaking of cooking competition

shows Irish chef is still a high watermark for the genre now I just watched the original episode and it occurred to me that Irish chef is nothing more than American football played out in the kitchen both are limited by time there are scorecards judges or referees costume spectators and of course live commentary the set of Irish chef is even referred to as a kitchen

stadium plus food and football have always gone together thanks super ball snacks and tell

gate parties so is cooking a competitive sport maybe but winter lose everyone gets to sit down

“to a good meal I think that is referred to as a win win you're listening to Milk Street radio coming”

up Kim Severson on the rise of the carnivore I'm Christopher Kimball and this is Milk Street radio now let's head into the kitchen with Jayum Hirsch to talk about this week's recipe puff pastry catcher port jam how are you I'm doing great so you spend some time in Georgia I spent some time in Romania but Georgia has a lot of things I didn't expect including a catcher porty which was not anything like what I would refer to as catcher porty so let's start with that

what is catcher porty well it's most basic catcher porty is bread stuffed with some sort of cheese and the catcher porty the americans tend to know best is kind of shaped like a canoe or a boat and it's filled with melted cheese and usually topped with an egg right at the last bit of cooking to serve it you take a fork and you stir the melted cheese in the egg in the center and you kind of whip it all together and then you tear off hunks of bread from the sides and you dunk it in

it's Georgian fondue if you will but that is the best known catcher porty in the United States and it's actually called a jarian catcher porty and it's from the jara region of Georgia but what I learned when I went to Georgia is there is some 50 plus variations of catcher porty from across Georgia

cheese but also sometimes meat and there are just so many ways of doing it at its heart it is comfort

“food now I was lucky enough to be invited to a super which is kind of a Georgian feast and I was”

at a winery in the Elazani valley which is Georgia's kind of premier wine region and by the way Georgia is a very proud of their wine because they've been making it for some eight thousand years they claim that it's the oldest wine making region in the world and I'm not going to argue with them well the all medians in the Iranians would fight you to the death about that but anyway precisely I'm going to say out of that fight so I was at this winery and one of the owners and ilamides

they offered to make me a different take on catcher port she was making me what's called panovani catcher port and it was so simple and so wonderful I was actually really surprised because you know the a jarian catcher port the catcher port that we know better is actually a little bit involved to make it's more involved in making a pizza certainly and what she did was she took a sheet of purchased puff pastry so right there is easier and she rolled it out and across half

of it she spread kind of crumbled up grated up email really cheese which is a local cheese that is kind of tangy kind of salty kind of squeaky and kind of a haluni sort of way but she spread this over half the dough then through some tarragon and other herbs on top of it

and then folded the other half up over it and sealed the edges now basically what we're talking

“about here is a cheese pop duck at this point at least that's what it resembled”

and she brushed it with egg and baked it and when it came out you know the puff pastry was so tender and flaky and it kind of wrapped itself around this salty briny tender cheese in with the herbs cutting through it was really really wonderful and such a simple catcher port I was really surprised by how good and how simple it was. This sounds like an Instagram post what it really does really. We used to use store-butt puff pastry so how does this qualify as catcher port if it's a

store-butt puff pastry it's just one of many variations on a theme. Exactly it's just one

of 50 or so of catcher port is found across Georgia and the doughs for each can be different and

often are and so you know obviously some people could make puff pastry but you know I'm certainly not going to do that and you know plenty of Jordan's is by puff pastry and with this up it's really a shortcut catcher port in many ways because it came together so quickly and so easily. And there's no egg right? They just brushed a little bit of egg on the surface to give it a nice lacquered look at the only challenge for us when we were adapting this recipe back at Milk Street

was the cheese itself the Imeroli cheese you know it's hard to find in the US it has a very distinct flavor and texture but I took one for the team I ate a whole lot of Imeroli cheese while I was there just so that I could master the taste and what we would have to do to try to replicate it and what we came up with was a combination of cheeses we ended up with Casio Frisco, Feta cheese and mozzarella and if you combine those you actually get a flavor and texture and kind of meltability very similar

to the Imeroli cheese used in Georgia. Jim thank you puff pastry catcher purry this sort of updated Instagram version of a Georgian classic thank you. Thank you. You can get the recipe for puff pastry catcher purry at Milk Street Radio.com. This is Milk Street Radio now it's time to check in with our newest contributor Kim Severson. Kim what's in the news this week meet my friend we are in the age of the carnivore the demonization of meat is over one of the stats that I found really

interesting from this big study that was done for cargo 61% of consumers are actively increasing protein in their diets and that has gone up 13% since five years ago and 74% of them say that eating

“meat is an important part of their diet and are calling themselves carnivores as you will recall there”

was a time not too long ago when chefs were trying to expand their menus to have vegan on trays and the eat mostly plants not too much Michael Pollan moment was was big but it looks like those days are waning which I found fascinating. Well I've been a blame it entirely on the impossible burger. One thing that struck me was a couple years ago Jordan Peterson he's the sociologist from Canada and putting aside his politics for the minute he said that he went on an all meat diet that's

now meat is not just okay to eat it is a medicine it's like food is medicine which is something

I'd never heard before when it comes to a meat diet. Well Chris clearly you're going to have to

start hanging out with the carnibros who are eating meat like crazy but it is interesting meat is getting this health halo that sort of surprising right and I know I for some of my reporting talk to butchers who run a shop in the village and they you know handle beef tallow and beef and animal fats all the time but they've noticed their skin is better their hair feels stronger you know their nails feel stronger you'd be interested to know that this also extends into

social media right now big trend beef tallow tick talk people are rendering their own beef tallow mix again in with things like to juggle oil and making it into this kind of fluffy

“cream and putting it on their face but it is the reason that tallow I think is having his moment”

is also because of politics and other diets that were very meat centric keto atkins did not have this attachment to politics in the way the new meat moment does and part of it is of course because our health and human service secretary Robert Kennedy Jr is famously a fan of beef tallow a sort of a symbol of pushing against processed food and big food companies he is fried his turkey and beef tallow and more recently was sitting in a steak and shake restaurant which had

announced they were changing all of their deep fat priors from vegetable oil to beef tallow here's my question when Kennedy said he wants to go after the big food companies for all the artificial ingredients and the processing I was just going like wait a minute you know the circles coming around again and now you have this guy who's you know you'd say on the right culturally who's saying something that Bernie Sanders or Alice Waters would say on the left

so is there a confluence here of of the the left meets the right in terms of food

“I think there's a stripping down of a lot of the federal agencies that handle food and I don't know”

how that's going to work out but I do think there is a place that is taking now the progressive

left and the very conservative right and bringing them together in a place that I never thought we

would be where Bobby Kennedy and Alice Waters are sharing values on this one weird little part of the venn diagram so where do you think this ends up do you think that we're going to start eating meat like we did back in the fifties well this is going to be a new way of thinking about meat entirely I think you and I have both been in the food game long enough to know that two trends can often happen at the same time right especially in the broad swath of the American

dining public so I think that we will be seeing meat returning to a place of prominence

“but I think ultimately what's bubbling up is this movement toward real food and the goal is to”

get the food that you're eating to come from the earth or be raised from the earth whether it's meat

or it's vegetable so I think this is ultimately a good thing it's fascinating I never thought

I'd see it but here we are well I have one other hope you know I like to eat food not philosophy so maybe we should take all the philosophical underpinnings out of all of this and just talk about the food and whether it's healthy because it seems to me all these food movements are based on a concept a bigger notion and maybe we're getting to the point where we just want to have healthy food right and deliciousness healthy delicious food right yeah come next time we get together

it's take night on me how about that okay I'm gonna take you up on that Chris thanks thanks that was Kim Severson food correspondent at the New York Times well that's it for today to hear all of our episodes go to milkstreetradio.com or wherever you get your podcasts to explore milkstreet and everything we have to offer go to 177 milkstreet.com there you can become a member and get full access to every recipe freeze standard shipping

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