Aleksandra Crapanzano

Hi, it's Joe Interestine, host of the Spirer Jodder podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my dear friend, Christa Williams.

“It can change you in the best way possible, dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns,”

the embodiment of Pisces intuition, with Capricorn power moves. Just so I'm like delusionally proud of my chart, listen to the Spirer Jodder podcast, starting on February 24th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Icarol.

This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all.

As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.

So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to it, girl, with Bailey Taylor on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ruthie's table four, presented by Sky.

There was a moment where all of Paris would be excited when wild strawberries came in, and you would see people walking in the streets carrying the precious mountains of strawberries, and then they would disappear. That was that kind of if Femoral charm was absolutely something. Alexander Kappernsano and I share the same passions, were obsessed with our children, addicted

to Paris, and from the moment we wake up, until the moment we go to sleep, we write, we talk, and we dream about food. Alexander's written, four fantastic books, the London Cookbook, Eat Cook, LA, Gato, and most recently, Chocolate, Parisian desserts, and other delights. So let's talk about the book.

“Let's talk about this beautiful, like, Parisian book with there's a map, isn't there?”

So long before iPhones and being able to, you know, check where you were all the time and have somebody, you know, tell you where you are into your AirPods. People used to say to me, "Where do you go in Paris?" What's your favorite area? And I would draw these little maps, and I don't know how to draw, so nothing was proportional,

nothing made any sense, but I would draw maps of kind of where the chocolate shops were, where the bakeries were, where the fun places to go were.

So I always drew these kind of funny little maps, and then I thought, you know what?

This is what people need to see, because it's so different from, from, from putting on your AirPods, and being told, you know, turn left on, you know, it's just and the, what I'd love in these illustrations is also just showing just that how many chocolate shops, yeah, there are, right? I mean, Paris is so full of chocolate shops, and there, you know, you can literally have

a kind of five street radius where you have 10 chocolate shops. Like, De Bovigale, which, you know, started right after the revolution. Yeah. And the history of that is, I just, I, I love history, as you know, but I found out that De Bov was the pharmacist to marry onto an act, and so he used to make her, you know,

she always got these terrible headaches, which were probably hangovers, but he would give her

her little, you know, whatever the equivalent of Tylenol was back then, and she would always kind of pucker her lips at the bitterness. So one day he thought that he would put the medicine in a little bit of chocolate cocoa and kind of create a little paste with it, and he added a little bit of almond powder and a little bit of orange blossom, and he, and he mushed it all together and gave it to her, and that really became the first kind of chocolate

bumble. I didn't know that. And they still sell them now without the, without the mess up. Do you, do you think that it is the French, you know, that if you go to that, that good chocolate

“belongs to the French? I think the, what the French did is then, they really created the great”

chocolate desserts. I don't think they can claim credit for chocolate, but necessarily, you certainly had incredible chocolate in Switzerland and Belgium. Yeah. And it led, but, but they really, I mean, a mousseau chocolat soufflé, I mean, Charlotte, I mean, so many abustinoelle, all of those, those great, you know, the flourless chocolate cake that we all love, right? Well, should we read one of them? Sure. You're going to say normally. Usually,

the guests chose this is a recipe from one of our recipes, but we wanted you to choose one from

that in French it's a chimer sap, and what I love about it is it's, um, it's not quite a pudding,

“it's not quite a mousse, you know, it's, it's just, it's just literally chocolate silk. It's chocolate”

cream, come on, it's obviously cream. And it's so easy. I make it all the time. You can put fruit underneath it, you can put berries on top, you can put little caramelized nuts on top, you can add ginger. I mean, it's one of those recipes that you can just do things to and change all the time. So chimer sap, simple chocolate silk. Now, this makes eight very small portions. I would probably do six slightly larger portions. You need 280 grams of dark chocolate between 58 and 62%

cocoa. One cup of heavy cream, one half cup of whole milk, one fourth cup of granulated sugar, two large eggs at room temperature, and you can add the seeds from one vanilla bean if you want, and just a touch of salt. I say one eighth teaspoon, but, you know, just a little pinch.

“Break the chocolate into pieces and place it in a mixing bowl. Lightly whisk the cream, milk,”

sugar, and eggs together in a saucepan, place over medium low heat and whisk constantly until the mixture is started to thicken. Remove the chimer from the heat, pour it over the chocolate, and gently stir as a chocolate melts. Once the chocolate is melted, whisk by hand or using electric beaters or an immersion blender fitted with a whisk attachment until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Allow it to come to room temperature. If using fruit, the chimer may be poured over the fruit

or be topped with it in individual ramigans or in a little serving bowl, and if you won't be serving the chimer within the day, hold off on the fruit until within a few hours of serving. This is just so it doesn't release too much liquid. The chimer should be kept refrigerated, covered tightly with plastic wrap, make sure the wrap touches the surface of the chimer so that a film doesn't form, chill for at least one hour and up to 24, then bring to cool room

temperature before serving. So easy. So easy. So easy. You just stir cream and chocolate,

basically. It's perfect. When you're writing them up, we're just cooking all the time.

“Oh my god, yes. And how did that go down with the chimer?”

With a lot of gurg? I can't think of anything better than having my wife, partner, mother, making another chocolate recipe. I think I must have made about 200 chocolate desserts. And of course of 18 months. It was a lot. It was a lot. And then I would retest. Sometimes I do more than one a day, I do variation. So you know what? It's like this is constant testing. Thankfully, my family loves chocolate.

I think the tough thing about food writing is that you tend to absorb yourself in a subject over a period of time. And so I remember Amanda Hester once saying to me that she was doing a piece on tomatoes. And all she had cooked for a week were tomatoes. Yeah. So it's just part of it. Yeah. I am still not sick of chocolate. I still love chocolate. What is a complex recipe that you know? I would say the only topics there are recipes that you want to get out and hurry.

Sometimes the most relaxing thing you can do on a Saturday. Does you think this is a recipe that will take? What would that one be? The the opera cake. The opera is such a great cake. It's the only truly difficult recipe I put in the book. And it's not even that difficult, but it has so many different components that it really is. It's a project. Do you want to tell everybody what it's an opera cake? The opera cake is very thin layers of shackled, which is a kind of almond

sponge cake that have been brushed in. It could be a coffee simple syrup or I don't add a little bit of rum to it. It has a layers of either camera or a French buttercream, chocolate buttercream, it's multiple layers. It is covered and each one is beautifully sat around with the liquid. So you really get that explosion of flavor. What I love about shackled and all of those French sponge cakes, the gen was, is really a tremendous amount of liquid flavor and still keep their

structure. When we lived in Paris, that was the cake that we always went for. Because it was actually

something that I never had made, you know, lots of different types of cakes and necklaces and sorbets. But the opera I just was something that I wanted somebody else to make for me. Was this when Richard was doing Pompito? Yes. My sister was one of the artists and she was

when you had checkbooks. Every stub was for food. It was easier than the restaurant, buying Pompito's free or eating, you know, wherever we did, we dropped an 8 and 8 and 8. It's a rare city that you would get in the back of a taxi with a sea bass. And the driver would tell you how to cook it. And I feel that is the culture of food. When you know, somebody will tell you what they grew up with. And going to the Bologerie, if you wanted bread in the morning,

if at lunch, you'd go in the morning. And if you wanted bread in the evening, you'd go after four and get the bread in the evening. I know exactly what you mean. I loved growing up. I moved there when I was 10. And I had this great big Bouvier, a huge dog named Romeo, 125 pound dog from Normandy. And I would come home from school and we would just take off the two of us and walked all over Paris. And he could go into every single shop. H10. Yeah. I mean, he had a great sense of

direction. And nobody was going to, you know, it's so safe compared to New York. It was this sudden burst of freedom. Tell me about Bologna. Let's talk about your parents first full, James. So my mother has, you know, she wrote the letter from Europe for the New York or magazine

for 60 years from the age of 23 to 83. And so when I was, you know, a kid, we would always go to

Paris and Italy. We'd go to France and Italy and the summers. And she would be kind of working and, you know, working at home and doing interviews and all of that. When I was... Yes. Yeah. My mother cooks. She's a really funny cook because she's an excellent cook. She's totally a Julia Child cook. And she's picked that. I do too. Yeah. And she thinks that she's not a creative cook because she uses cookbook, right? But when you look at the cookbook, there's so many

annotations that they are her own recipes. Your father. But my father who did actually cook from me when my mother was gone would do a couple things really beautifully. I remember he early on taught me that one of the great flavors was to have an artichoke heart and a glass of milk because there's

something about that chemistry that produces the most incredible taste in your mouth. That we are

into the chemistry. Right. What did your father do? He's a professor of comparative literature and anthropology. Yeah. So when I was 10, he had a sabbatical. He wanted to go to Paris and and he was invited by Darry Dog to come and and be a professor there for a year and my mother wanted to work there and I was put into a school there and they ended up staying for 16 years. So for you,

“is it real immersion into culture, into food, into... Did you go to restaurants?”

Would they go into incredible restaurants? The dollar was so strong to Frank back then that there was nothing like a year or so. This was early '80s for middle school and then you know, straight into the '90s. Food was much... Paris was much less expensive for an American and so I remember going to Marc Menos at Les Béhals. I remember going to Jamal and having those

incredible potatoes that are whole butter. Talk about them, what are the potatoes? Oh gosh,

these are the whole-pushed potatoes, potato puree that he made with, I think, it was better than potatoes. It was an equal amount to butter potatoes. And a bit of potato with your butter. Exactly, but they were so soon blind and you know, and just the purity of those flavors. But I also

“remember that I kind of fell in love with food shopping. I mean I would window shop for food shop”

at food shops. The way that you might go and look at the windows and burped off good men or go in the East Village and look at clothes. I would, you know, with Romeo, we would walk around Paris and we would look at all of the windows of the different pettisahes and the chocolate shops and the cheese shops brought out of me. We would go inside and just smell the cheese and it's an amazing potato. It's just the best potato cheese store in front of all the chefs, layers and layers and layers

of cheeses. And if you asked for creme freshly, we would just take a big ladle and pull it out of a big container and you would just see the cream kind of drip into your little container and take it home and it just, it was so real. And then we, you know, I would, I started to, as I began to learn French butter and butter, I would, I would go into food shops and I would listen to the dialogue

“between the customer and the shopkeeper. And, and I think that was really the beginning of my food”

education. You know, there was a process by which you could tell that the customer had to prove that

kind of a courtship and an assessment going on. And then once that was established, then it would be a conversation about whatever that dish was going to be. And then suddenly, say, it is the butcher, he would start to talk about how to prepare the meat. And then they would look at the different. It was such a, it was not a transaction. It was a dialogue. Did you understand seasonality from France? Do you think that, absolutely, going to the markets and seeing that the vegetable

“you saw last week was gone? Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I also remember the incredible attention”

right paid to whether there were, remember we would get, we've got grapes. And they'd be in a tiny little beautiful kind of almost origami like, you know, carton with paper just kind of ballooning over them so that nothing touched them. That there was a real sense of, you know, a festive wall, you know, that that it was that there was a moment where like all of Paris would be excited when wild strawberries came in. And you would see people walking in the streets carrying the

kind of precious mountains of strawberries. And then they would disappear. Yeah. That was that kind of if femoral charm was absolutely something. You know, John said this to me once he said, you know, it was the place where your family as a whole was happiest. Yes. And I hadn't thought about that until then. But my, my father loved writing in cafes. My mother was just like in her element working. I had suddenly discovered a confidence that I didn't have an an inability to be independent

“and the city just had such an extraordinary romantic hold on me. I think there's also something”

about Paris, which is part of the food and the music, everything else of Paris is I get a thrill from the lighting at night. Oh, yeah. And you can be, you know, and apparently the Paris is lit by the same department. You know, and so I think that's kind of amazing that what you see at the Alvelide, you'll see Epigol, you know, and for me that kind of that unity is something I love.

I never thought of that. It's that golden glow, the lights are beautiful. Do your parents encourage

you to go? No, but what happened? What happened to my mother had an American assistant because, you know, those were the days where you typed instead of how to get a computer. So before she turned on a piece that had to really be typed up with all of her notes. And so this American would, who would kind of be a babysitter as well to me in the evening. Once took a skillet, put some ketchup in it, turn the heat on, and put a box of dried spaghetti. Oh my gosh.

No, it was supposed to be. And I thought to myself, no way. So I started cooking when my parents went out. And I realized I was, I was super, I guess I was cooking for the babysitter. And I just wanted the food to be good. That would be then like, I was probably Santa or love in her 12th.

I remember I would always cook, I would, I would get because the chicken is so good in France.

I would just to chicken. Yeah. Declase it, you know, the pan with white wine and a ton of gram flour, a little diesel, a lot of tarragon. Wow. And that was my stillest one of my all-time favorite meals. So I did that and then, you know, when I went to France houses, I would, I realized that, you know, there was always a little something sweet. I mean, you learn to make yogurt cake at the age of five in every single school in France.

And then you have this recipe that you have for life, which I love. Was it shocking for you to go to Harvard? I did Cambridge. Yes.

“And was that a big adjustment to suddenly be on your own in America in the United States?”

I thought, you know, what? I've lived all over the world. I, you know, I can totally handle this. And I remember walking into, at that point, it was called the Union Diding Hall at Harvard, or there were, you know, 1,200 people eating and it was incredibly noisy. And, and I suddenly just lost all my confidence. And I, I walked and I got a muffin at this little place called war burdens. And for about the first week, I don't think I actually went into the cafeteria again. And then,

once I made friends and would meet people. But it was daunting. And then I, I had all of these

strange things I didn't know how to do. I'd never used a microwave. So the first time I went to

put something in a microwave, I remember I, I was actually trying to take the, the pasta and, and heat it, because it was part of the salad bar, which I was odd. It's like freezing cold sticky pasta. And so I'd put some butter on it. And I wanted to put it in the microwave. And I put a fork in. And I remember, I put a fork in the microwave.

why, I had no, I had no idea. And I, I learned, I basically think at Harvard, I ate

peanut butter strawberry jam and banana sandwiches for the most of the food was really horrible.

“So I was your first food job involved with food. Oh, is it filling?”

Kind of was my first job was working for my knickles. And Mike did not want Diane his wife, Diane Sawyer, to know what he was eating, because he was supposed to be on a very strict heart diet. So part of my job was to go into his trailer and make a pasta. Oh, yeah. And we were all hooked up by Wookie talk. He said, if Diane was coming to, to set, I would get this message of, you know, open the windows, light the higocandle, you know,

get Mike his eltoids. You take first and with another person. Because she's a great journalist. She probably knew exactly what he was doing. I think she knew and allowed it. And then at night, I remember on that set, I would be given thousands of dollars in cash. And a teamster would take me to Peter Loogers to get steak. It's a great steak house in Brooklyn where they, I don't know how long the age that's porterhouse sticks. But it's incredible, right? I mean,

it's just it's it's amazing thick fantastic steak. So I would get these wads of cash and a teamster would take me to Peter Loogers. And then, you know, it was kind of for above the line, John Nicholson, Mike, Michelle, there are a bunch of people who would get the steak. And then I could take

them the leftovers. Could you fall in love with somebody you did care about food? Never, never. Could

you know, great. No, no, no, no, no. I was thinking about that today is one of one of my very first meetings in film actually was was a producer took me out to lunch, wanted to option a script of mine. And he took me to the worst restaurant I've ever been to. And and I thought, no way. It was a mistake because he turned out to be the better producer. But, but it's, uh, I, oh, he did you're not to be a good producer. He did what I didn't, but I, I should have, I should have worked

with what he did because I thought. I thought I thought, you know, what I can possibly spend the next three years on a movie with somebody who doesn't like food. Um, no, it's a, it is to me, eating, eating together is, is, is family. Yeah. I started food writing because I started in film. And I didn't really write about food until Garak was born in 2007. There was a writer, skilled strike. And, and I thought, you know, let me send an article into the New York Times

magazine on food. And, um, it was on French food. And that suddenly launched up a side career.

But to me, food was always cooking was very much associated with, with feeding my family.

When you write these for fantastic books, do you eat while you're, do you sit down and have lunch or do you kind of graze all day or do you have nothing? Uh, I do probably graze when I'm, when I'm cooking because you don't, because you're taking little bites of things kind of throughout the day. I do really, really believe in sitting down to dinner. Yeah. I don't care so much about

“the rest of the day. I mean, do you graze when you are, you must in the kitchen last night? Basically,”

you don't eat until the end of service. And then, and, and, and it's interesting to see how different chefs eat, you know, some of the, and the front of house, you know, front of us, the way to pile food. And all the, we cook our food for the staff. So, everybody eats river cafe food. We don't buy in, you know, food or, you know, food. Yeah, it's almost, it's almost like they tried and press their friends by different chefs to do the staff lunch. And I've had friends like Josh

come at the end of a dinner and come and look and see what the staff of the house is there. I was just in her room too. That looks really good. I have such a happy memory when I was, when I was writing the London cookbook, which, which truly was inspired by you entirely. And my desire to come and spend time with the river cafe and learn and watch. It's a great book of many restaurants. I had so much fun writing that, you know, that was, that was an important book

“for me. I think it was, I felt that there was something happening in London that was incredibly exciting,”

that I really do believe that you and, and Ferguson kind of started, which was the idea that a restaurant could be delicious and fun and warm and sexy. It, it's just, you, you truly redefined to me the London restaurant. And I, I just, I felt enormously inspired to thank you to come and and write about what you do. And, and also the way that, you know, the way that you teach,

gentle and precise at the same time. And so different from, you know, the kind of crazy market

pure white, you know, where everybody's tense and it's kind of a maccivalian world. And I would just watch you, you know, with a gentlest, but very precise way of kind of offering a little suggestion or a correction or a taste, watching people doing it at that, you know, furgas, as you say. I think Alice Walters thought about the way people could work in an open kitchen and treat each other with manners and the way. And as I said, I agree with you that you, you know, I said, you used to

be that if you wanted to eat well, you had to dress up and behave and, or else, if you wanted to have a good time, you'd say, okay, I want to have a good time in the restaurant, but the food will be

as good. Why can't you have really, you know, good food and have fun, you know, and in the

democratic space, you know. I also, you know, almost every really great cook chef and lunch

“it has been through the river cafe. You know, I mean, and that's why I wanted to do the family”

tree in the book because you, you taught a generation and, and that generation taught another generation and you're still teaching generations. And so, so what you have done has had this extraordinary impact on restaurants throughout the world, the city and the world. I think it's great for the culture and it's great to make go and, and you go to their restaurants and they're cooking exciting things or doing it their way, but with, I think a lot of them bring take away

as much as a cooking and the way they respect those seasons or the food of the, how they're going

to, you know, the ingredients quality is the thirst, you know, of, of trying to have a kitchen where people are, you know, I think that old idea of the bullying and the shouting is kind of really old-fashioned, you know. Very old-fashioned, you know, and I think people are going to put up with it a bit more and nor should they. No, no, no. Sitting with these three books is their, like Paris, there is a consistency of, of the books, whether

it's the illustrations. I really, it was so interested in the fact that you had no photographs. Tell me about that. So, Gato, I took a lot of really to me part of a series and so next I'm going to do Tots and Galats and Keish. And what I wanted to do with this series is I wanted to really

“focus in on what presions make at home. And, and particularly for Americans, I think, to kind of”

to separate this idea that I think a lot of people have when they go to Paris that people, you know, CPTC and they assume that that is French sweet making. And in fact, when you kind of, when you go into people's houses, they do cook desserts, they do bake. They bake very, very simply. And I realized that that had not really been written about that there were no books on kind of basic French cakes, or, you know, all of the chocolate desserts that you can actually make at home. Yeah. And then I

wanted, you know, so many of my French friends will quickly make a chart for dinner. Very simple. Could be a tomato chart. You know, it could be, it could be something in the winter with some some cheese and d'aule and melted onions. But it's such a simple thing. And I think there's something economical about it and easy about it, and it's less meat-focused. It's also more vegetable-focused. So that one will be savory as well. But I chose, I really chose to have

the books illustrated, because I didn't want people to feel that they had to compete with the photographs.

“Yeah. And I think this is particularly true for desserts. But I didn't want somebody to think”

that they had to take out a pastry bag and create perfect little ruse on top of their cake. I wanted them to just go go in. To not compare themselves to know that they could just, well, that's back to the performance. Yeah. And sprinkle it with some powdered sugar or some cocoa and, you know, it's gorgeous and it's simplicity. So we look forward, when is the next one coming? Oh, we haven't started right now. Okay, go home. Okay, let's start working now. We want another,

we want another cookbook. Thank you very much. We can talk from that later hours. But to say that, you know, you were talking about peanut butter jelly sandwiches at Harvard and you're talking about pressing your nose up. I can imagine this 10-year-old girl walking through Paris with her nose pressed against the window to look at the food, whether it's an orange or a piece of cake or a piece of cheese. Food is all this. It's about sharing. It's about performance. It's about curiosity and

energy and love. But it's also about comfort. So I think for us to ask you as our last question,

I would make a carbonara. Would you? In a heart beat? Yeah. I mean, there's there's nothing that offers more comfort than pasta. And particularly that pasta to me because it's so simple.

You always have all the ingredients for a carbonara on hand. It takes no time. It's got

and it's and there's a, oh, it's, I mean, the panchetta or the guanchale and the cheese. It's exactly what you need. I cannot resist a carbonara. And I take it with one type of pasta. Do you make it with different ones? I, you know, sometimes, sometimes spaghetti, sometimes in a greenie. I know that if I have only short pasta in the house, I'll do that. But I, I do. I, I feel that to me,

“part of part of comfort is the twirling. So I want real comfort. Oh, do you? That's what you say.”

I do really want to twirl. Yeah, to twirl. It's, it's a, in my, in Moscow, my, to tell.

I mean, there's something in that act. I also love story in risotto, for example. Yes. I don't use that as something. There's something very, yeah. But that's, that's longer. If I want, if I want comfort and I want it right away, it's a carbonara. Okay. We'll have one together. Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Oh, my total pleasure.

Ruthie's table four is proud to support leukemia UK. Their cartwheel for a cure campaign raises funds

for vital research. And more effective and kinder treatments for acute maloeuvre leukemia. Please donate and to do so, search cartwheel for cure. Ruthie's table four was produced by Alex Bell, Robbie Hamilton and Zad Hortris, with Andrew Sand, and Bella Selini. This has been an atomized production for I-Hot Media. Hi, it's Jill Interesting, host of the spirit dotter podcast, where we talk about astrology,

natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today, I'm talking with my

“dear friend, Crystal Williams. It can change you in the best way possible, dance with the change,”

dance with the breakdowns, the embodiment of Pisces in tuition, with Capricorn power moves. Just so I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the spirit dotter podcast, starting on February 24th, on the I-Hot Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is Icarol. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women-shaping culture right now. Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking

about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all. As a woman in the industry,

“you're always underestimated, so you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise”

who you are in your integrity. You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to Icarol with Bailey Taylor on the I-Hot Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an I-Hot podcast. Guarantee the human.