0:00

Our show was supported by the all-new All Electric 2023

0:02

Nissan Aria. No

0:05

matter what kind of driver you are, the all-new

0:08

All Electric 2023 Nissan Aria

0:10

packages together all the features that make

0:12

you love to drive, all in a premium

0:15

EV. With the all-new All

0:17

Electric 2023 Nissan Aria, you don't

0:19

have to just choose speed or elegance,

0:22

it puts together every aspect of a thrilling driving

0:24

experience. Powered by an electric heart

0:26

that gives it incredible torque, The Aria

0:29

is Nissan's most powerful EV and

0:31

most advanced vehicle ever. But

0:33

it's not just about power. It's about confident design

0:35

which provides you with premium intelligence

0:38

and seamless connectivity. The Nissan

0:40

Aria is packed with features. The

0:42

all-new, all-electric, 2023

0:45

Nissan Aria. The EV for people

0:47

who love to drive. Learn more at

0:49

NissanUSA.com.

0:52

2023, Aria has limited availability.

0:54

Contact your local dealer for inventory information.

0:57

Our show is supported by Whole Foods

0:59

Market. Alright, well spring has

1:01

sprung and it is officially brunch season. I mean

1:04

obviously you can get together with friends and family

1:06

any time of the year, but brunch is just better

1:09

when the skies are bluer and the sun is warmer.

1:12

Let Whole Foods Market help you elevate your brunch

1:14

with everything you need for a delicious, beautiful

1:17

spring gathering. You can find everything from standards

1:19

like crispy organic bacon and silky

1:21

smooth quiches to plant-based options

1:23

that will satisfy everyone. Whole Foods Market

1:25

also has a huge selection of drinks, including

1:28

sparkling wines and, if you're taking it

1:30

easy, buzzless beers. Or,

1:33

if you don't know what would go best with what you're planning on serving,

1:35

a Whole Foods team member can help you find a great

1:38

pairing. And round out your home's look

1:40

with a sourced-for-good arrangement from the Whole

1:42

Foods floral department. Make brunch

1:44

happen at Whole Foods Market. it.

1:55

I'm Francis Lam and this is the Splendid Table

1:57

from APM. You

2:03

know, it is technically spring now,

2:05

but for a lot of the country, look,

2:07

this winter has just felt absolutely endless.

2:10

It's snowed in LA. Did you hear that?

2:13

It's snowed in LA. The

2:15

Twin Cities got like seven feet of it. And

2:18

meanwhile here in New York, it's been such a weirdly

2:20

mild winter, but it has just been

2:23

unrelentingly gray for four

2:25

months. Anyway, what I'm saying is

2:27

if winter is going to insist on sticking around We

2:30

might as well make the most of it and get cozy

2:33

with the oven on

2:33

something delicious baking inside of it So

2:36

this week we are talking with three fabulous Totally

2:40

different baking experts. We have

2:42

Chetna Macan who won millions of hearts

2:44

on the Great British Baking Show Talking about

2:46

her Indian inspired easy bakes Esteban

2:49

Castillo the man behind the beloved blog Chicano

2:52

eats will come talk about his love of Thanksgiving

2:54

sweet breads and cakes and And first,

2:57

we have one of the great gems of New York City,

3:00

the pastry chef, Natasha Pickewitz. Natasha

3:03

was for years the leader

3:05

of the sweets team at some of New York's coolest

3:07

restaurants, Alto Parrottizo and

3:09

Flora Bar, where she made a reputation

3:12

even among fellow pastry chefs for marrying

3:15

simplicity with unique flavors and

3:17

a lot of shopping at the farmer's market. Well,

3:19

her new book is written for home bakers.

3:22

It's called More Than Cake, 100 baking

3:24

recipes for pleasure and community. Hey,

3:27

chef, it's great to have you on the show.

3:29

Hi, I'm so happy

3:31

to be here. I love your

3:33

enormously filled bookshelves

3:36

behind you. Like you truly have more books than I

3:38

do.

3:39

This is actually not even

3:41

the cookbook portion of my collection,

3:44

which I keep like closer to my kitchen area.

3:47

But I love all my books.

3:49

So congratulations on having your

3:51

own to put on that pile. It's

3:53

awesome, I want to keep every single

3:56

page. And you know, one thing I think

3:58

was

3:58

so interesting about your book. as I was reading it is,

4:01

you know, you have all these recipes that have these really

4:03

unique flavor combinations that I think

4:06

would probably be exciting and thrilling

4:08

to see in a restaurant, but

4:10

you really wrote this with a home baker in mind,

4:12

it seems to me. And

4:14

I wanted to actually first ask

4:16

you about your recipe testing process because

4:20

when you were testing it, you were kind of like intentionally

4:22

trying to screw them up almost,

4:24

right? You were trying to be like, if I don't have

4:27

this, can I still make it? Like, tell

4:29

me about that whole process. Yeah,

4:33

I mean, recipe testing is such

4:36

an exhaustive, thorough kind

4:38

of meticulous process. And

4:42

I really wanted to understand how the recipes worked through

4:45

failures and through mistakes. Because

4:50

I actually feel like failures are this incredible opportunity to

4:52

sort of understand the nuances of a technique or

4:55

a genre of baking. So

4:59

not that I was intentionally trying

5:01

to mess anything up, but

5:03

I really wanted to see how things would react the

5:06

more I kind of played and messed around

5:08

with certain things. And that's everything

5:10

from taking a recipe

5:13

and scaling it up, scaling it down.

5:15

How is something going to respond when you

5:18

change batch size? How is something

5:20

going to respond when you mess around

5:22

with the temperature of ingredients, temperature

5:24

of your oven, you know, and

5:26

what the ingredients are. And I really

5:29

was curious and sometimes there

5:31

are little breakthroughs or revelations that come

5:34

from that process, you know, and

5:36

I think a lot of chefs identify with that part

5:38

of it too, is sort of these discoveries

5:41

that, you know, they don't feel

5:43

arbitrary, but they feel like you kind of

5:45

stumbled upon something magical. And I think

5:47

that comes through this sort of

5:49

process of trial and error, because

5:51

I I really wanted to respect the

5:53

reader and the home baker and

5:56

imagine the kind of situation

5:59

they might find them.

6:00

in if they forgot

6:02

to temper their butter or if they don't have

6:04

any bleached flour, but

6:06

they have a whole grain flour. How

6:08

will that affect the recipe? Because I

6:10

know that

6:13

somebody's home kitchen isn't going to really look exactly

6:16

like mine or exactly like yours. So

6:18

I wanted to create recipes that I thought

6:21

people could play around with and hopefully make their

6:23

own. Yeah. Were there any recipes that

6:25

really surprised you when you were testing this way,

6:28

like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that would actually work

6:30

or.

6:30

Well, absolutely.

6:33

I mean, you know, I have

6:35

a recipe, um, in the book and

6:38

I never, I don't use the word biscotti

6:40

in describing what the recipe is and they're

6:42

called, it's the fennel seed and chocolate

6:45

hazelnut spears. And

6:47

that was actually a really funny

6:49

one because I had made

6:51

biscotti for years years at

6:53

the Italian restaurant, Altra Paradiso.

6:56

And I was working on a recipe for the book

6:59

and in the process of scaling it down

7:01

from my giant restaurant batch size

7:03

to the home kitchen batch

7:05

size, I messed

7:08

up the quantities of the butter and the sugar. And

7:10

I didn't,

7:11

you know, do the math properly. And

7:14

there was so much butter and sugar in the cookie, they kind

7:16

of spread like lava

7:18

on the sheet pan in this way

7:20

where I I was like, oh my God, what did I do? It

7:23

looks insane.

7:25

And then I let it cool and I took a little

7:27

nibble and I was like, oh my gosh, this

7:29

is the most delicious thing.

7:33

And it actually, butter is not

7:35

a traditional ingredient in biscotti,

7:37

usually you don't see butter at all, but I

7:40

really loved how it made this kind of

7:42

melt in your mouth texture with

7:44

this kind of crisp buttery cookie.

7:47

So I kind of stayed with it. And I was

7:49

like, this is a kind of a decadent twist

7:52

on, you know, the kind of molar crunching

7:55

cookie that we know is biscotti.

7:57

I wanted something a little more supple,

7:59

a little...

9:26

process

10:00

and it'll be delicious. You know, like there's

10:03

so many desserts that kind of riff off of that

10:05

idea, but I wanted to reassure the reader

10:08

that if you thought you were making

10:10

a mistake, there's still a way to

10:12

kind of go back and save it.

10:14

Yeah, actually I worked on an ice

10:16

cream book many years ago. It was

10:18

really, really amazing author and chef

10:21

named Dana Cree and the very last

10:23

recipe in the book. I love that

10:25

book. It's awesome. One of the best. Thank

10:27

you for buying it. Yeah. You

10:30

know, it's just like a deep, deep dive

10:32

into like how ice creams work. And I love that

10:34

the last

10:35

recipe in the book is, okay,

10:38

if you really did mess up an ice cream base, here's

10:41

how you turned into a cake. I don't mean ice cream cake, like

10:43

literally like add flour, add eggs,

10:47

and like it'll actually bake up into an amazing

10:49

cake. I'm like, oh my God, like that's so

10:51

smart.

10:51

Incredible. Yeah. It's

10:54

true. It's true. exactly

10:56

the kind of critical thinking that

10:59

I'm really hoping readers will take

11:01

to heart. And I think pastry specifically

11:03

is this area where people are like, must

11:06

follow recipe step by step.

11:08

If I don't, I will fail.

11:11

And I think once you sort of engage

11:14

that critical thinking part of your brain,

11:16

where you're like, okay, if

11:18

I've over beaten this whipped cream,

11:20

and it looks grainy,

11:21

I know I can stream in a little

11:24

liquid cream and it'll become silky and

11:26

look smooth again. So I think this is the

11:28

kind of like brain rewiring,

11:31

arranging that feels so good to have

11:33

once you have this sort of map of the book

11:35

in front of you and then you kind of start

11:38

to solve your own problems. And I just love

11:40

that feeling. It's so empowering and it just,

11:42

it feels incredible to sort of have that, you

11:45

know, confidence with, with ingredients

11:47

and technique.

11:48

Yeah. But you could actually save

11:50

over whipped whipped cream. You

11:53

could save anything. You could save over

11:55

whipped egg whites. This was something

11:57

that also happened to me a lot in recipe testing.

12:00

where I would have a million

12:02

things going at the same time. So I'm like, stuff

12:04

in the oven, there's nuts toasting in a

12:06

pan, there's a

12:08

stand mixer on high beating egg whites,

12:10

and everyone knows, you turn your back for a second,

12:13

it goes from perfectly glossy

12:15

meringue to over-whipped disaster.

12:18

And I had this large batch of meringue going,

12:20

and I'm like, no, no, I cannot start this over.

12:22

I'm timing it with the syrup,

12:24

I'm cooking it at the same time for buttercream. So

12:27

I just slipped another raw

12:29

egg white into it and it smoothed it right

12:31

out. That's wild. And whipped cream is the same way.

12:34

It can, you know, you whip cream too long

12:36

and it becomes butter. But there's

12:38

a phase where it looks gritty or grainy

12:40

and it kind of doesn't look that yummy. If you

12:43

stream in just liquid cream, it'll

12:45

bring it back to life and give you that texture

12:47

you want. Yeah.

12:48

That's wild. That's

12:50

awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

12:54

That's Natasha Pickowitz, author of More

12:56

Than Cake, We'll be back in a minute to talk about her

12:58

recipes, including one for

13:00

granola shortbread. Then...

13:03

Now, our culture is already so colorful.

13:05

You see color everywhere. And so I

13:08

think just embedding color into

13:10

our pastries is just an extension of the culture.

13:13

For me, color has always been a really

13:15

big part of my life and the

13:17

work that I do. I love bright colors.

13:20

It's the way that I get to also infuse my

13:22

queer identity into

13:25

my work. You know, these colors are really

13:27

loud, they're very vibrant and saturated.

13:30

It's just such a huge part of my life. That's

13:32

Esteban Castillo,

13:33

author of Chicano Bakes. We'll

13:35

be back in a minute. I'm Francis Lam, and this

13:37

is the Splendid Table

13:38

from APM.

13:46

Our show is supported by Made In Cookware.

13:49

Tapping into the knowledge of celebrated chefs

13:51

and expert artisans, Made In Craft's

13:53

elegant, professional quality cookware for restaurants

13:56

and home kitchens alike.

13:57

People tell them that they can feel and taste

14:00

difference when they use made-in products. And

14:02

since this week we're talking about baking, we're

14:04

going to tell you about Maiden's Bakeware Collection.

14:07

The porcelain is crafted from a 202 year

14:09

old recipe. It's naturally non-stick

14:12

and thermal shock resistant, meaning you can move

14:14

from the freezer to the oven to the table

14:16

without worry. Maiden's Bakeware

14:18

Set contains rectangle, square and

14:21

oval shaped dishes and can be used for pretty much

14:23

any bake you can imagine. Try something

14:25

new in bakeware that's both tried and

14:27

true. Splendid Table listeners get 15% off

14:30

full-priced items and orders of $100 or more from

14:32

Made In. For

14:35

full details, visit MadeInCookware.com

14:37

slash Splendid. That's

14:39

MadeInCookware.com slash

14:42

Splendid. Our show is supported by Zoop.

14:45

You know, there aren't really that many ingredients

14:47

that are more necessary to pretty much any

14:49

cuisine than good broth. Birria

14:52

tacos, ramen, borscht, they

14:54

all need broth.

14:55

Broths are versatile and they give your cooking a deep

14:58

rich flavor even when they're not the star

15:00

of a meal. Zoop Good

15:02

Really Good was founded by folks who know

15:05

flavor, developed from 20 plus years

15:07

in the soup and spice industries, and

15:09

their super premium brods are available in

15:12

recyclable glass jars. Check

15:14

out Zoop Brods and flavors like chicken,

15:16

vegetable, and seafood, or try Zoop culinary

15:19

concentrates. They're bases for chicken or

15:21

beef bone broth and they even have a savory

15:23

vegan option. And check out Zoop's five

15:26

new premium soups like butternut squash

15:28

with brown butter and sage. They're delicious

15:31

upgrade over your typical store-bought soups.

15:34

All Zoop products are free of artificial

15:36

ingredients preservatives and GMOs.

15:38

Zoop products are available at your favorite natural

15:41

and mainstream retailers across the country. Just

15:43

look for their trademark glass jars. Plus

15:46

online at zoopbroth.com

15:48

and Amazon.

15:49

Use 20 Splendid to get 20% off your

15:51

first purchase on Amazon.

15:57

I'm Francis Lam and this is the show for Curious.

16:00

and eaters. We're

16:02

all about baking today from New

16:05

York to Mexico to London by way of India

16:07

and right now we're talking to Natasha

16:09

Pikowitz, author of the new book More Than

16:12

Cake. We're getting into some of the really

16:14

good stuff in those pages. Get back to it.

16:19

So I want to talk to you about a couple recipes in the

16:21

book. One of them is the

16:23

granola shortbread. I mean

16:26

shortbread is delicious and classic. You know,

16:28

we all love it. Basically, it's butter, flour, sugar. But

16:32

in this shortbread dough, you

16:34

just straight up, like, grab some granola that you like

16:36

and add it to it. Like, that makes up a big

16:38

part of the dough itself, which I've never

16:41

seen before. And the other is that

16:43

instead of,

16:45

like, all-purpose flour, you use rice flour.

16:47

So tell us about both of those things

16:49

and what comes out in the end.

16:51

Yeah. Well, I love that you pointed that recipe

16:53

out. Shortbread is one of my favorite things in the world. I

16:56

love the texture. I love like a bar

16:58

and I love this recipe.

17:00

It's actually had its origins

17:03

when we opened Flora Bar

17:05

and Coffee at the Met Breuer back in 2016. And

17:09

at the time I was developing like a full menu

17:11

of pastries for the coffee bar

17:13

that was like servicing museum

17:16

guests. And

17:19

first of all, I wanted to have a gluten free pastry

17:21

and I had a bunch of like

17:24

Vietnamese white rice flour that

17:26

I was testing with a streusel with other

17:28

stuff that had it laying around. And I

17:30

found that when you're

17:32

making a buttery cookie, that

17:35

mouthfeel of almost like a sandy, short

17:38

texture that you get with rice flour

17:41

is super delicious and

17:43

a shortbread treatment. That

17:45

was a happy coincidence of checks

17:48

the box for being gluten-free,

17:50

but also makes the pastry better

17:52

than what it would have been if I'd used wheat flour. Super

17:55

cool. was at

17:57

the time we had this like granola part.

18:00

in the cafe where we were

18:02

selling little yogurt bowls with

18:05

fruit and granola. And we would have

18:08

little bits of granola leftover that we didn't

18:10

use for the parfait. And I was like, what can

18:12

I use this for? It's so delicious.

18:15

It's sweet and savory. I

18:17

know, I'm obsessed. And I

18:19

was like, what can I use this for? So I ground it into

18:21

a coarse crumb, a

18:24

bread crummy texture, and threw

18:26

it in with the shortbread. and it added

18:29

so much surprising depth of flavor

18:32

and kind of like a nuttiness sort

18:34

of, it just added like great body

18:36

to this cookie and made it feel really unexpected.

18:39

And it was a great way for us to use these

18:41

scraps that we didn't have. So I was like, okay,

18:43

this is the perfect thing to have in the book, because

18:45

who doesn't have like four jars

18:47

of granola that are like half empty

18:50

at any given moment, like a baggie

18:52

of this or whatever of that, like I always

18:54

do. And so I tested the recipe

18:56

with a million different kinds of granola, vegan

18:58

granola, buttery granola, you

19:00

know, nuts, whatever. I mean, as long as

19:02

it doesn't have like,

19:04

you know, big chocolate chunks in it that might like,

19:07

you really can use whatever you want. And

19:09

I loved this idea of like,

19:11

you know, a reader might have a granola that they love

19:14

at home. And so when they make that shortbread,

19:16

it won't taste like the one that I made with my granola,

19:18

but you know, it becomes theirs.

19:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another

19:23

recipe is the crunchy

19:25

almond cake. Now I am a absolute

19:28

almond lover. Like I used

19:30

to be like, oh chocolate, everything, all the chocolate for

19:33

dessert. At some point, like the switch flipped.

19:35

And I'm like, if there's almond flavor, anything,

19:38

that's what I'm getting. Yes. But

19:40

I have to say, I looked at the recipe and

19:43

you first say you make your own marzipan

19:46

for it. So then I'm like, I'm

19:48

out. But

19:51

like, for instance, honestly, it couldn't be easier.

19:54

easier. It's literally like almond flour

19:56

or

19:56

meal, sugar and egg

19:59

white. I mean when I started tested rescue testing

20:01

like the easiest version to make i was

20:03

like oh wow this this

20:05

is actually so much more simple than i thought

20:08

and but it's all about the texture

20:10

is so much improved it's like you

20:13

know plato vs like pebbles

20:15

outside like it's like of softball

20:18

more the more squishy

20:20

tender like so yummy

20:22

and it's from the egg white and

20:25

it's not like that kind of

20:27

show lacked ornamental kind

20:29

of tough marzipan you might see

20:32

and like you know sitting out in a bakery

20:34

counter like for who knows how long ago

20:36

that different whole other thing so

20:38

i really wanted to be like hey you know

20:41

if you have egg whites like sitting around like you

20:43

can make marzipan it'll stay good forever

20:45

keep in your freezer and you now

20:47

you get this like yummy kind of rope of

20:49

marzipan running through the core

20:51

of the cake which is like the

20:53

best surprise program

20:56

or guess i just finished with a recipe you make that

20:58

marzipan you roll it

21:00

onto a rope and then you walk

21:02

briskly poor cake batter around in a loaf

21:04

pan right you bake it so there you

21:07

this beautiful love cake with

21:08

his core of this to

21:10

be sticky yummy marzipan middle and

21:13

the you like a crunchy on topic under yes

21:16

oh my god even just unlike even you

21:18

describing my recipe i'm like that's good advice

21:20

that i'm an hour up now up on

21:23

of our if it if one of my favorite

21:25

recipes in the book i'm one are my favorite photographs

21:27

still but on the topping might

21:29

be one of my favorite parts actually and

21:32

it was inspired by this cake i made it this restaurant

21:34

i worked in montreal called lawrence

21:37

it called a queen elizabeth cake where

21:39

you have a sheet cake and

21:41

you broil this kind of toffee

21:44

like kind of coconut

21:45

sticky topping

21:47

on top of it until gets kind of crispy and golden

21:50

and so i will i wanted to try that but with sliced

21:52

almonds on which are one of my favorite

21:54

ingredients just to play around with on

21:57

and i loved how the not scott kind

21:59

of crispy and sticky and

22:02

crunchy under the broiler. And

22:05

then you get this kind of like no

22:07

frosting needed. You get this kind of crunchy

22:09

halo of almonds on

22:11

top of the cake. And it's

22:14

so good. You just have to sort of, with

22:16

the broiler, babysit a little bit, make sure the nuts

22:18

don't burn. But

22:21

again, what's the worst that happens? The nuts

22:23

burn, scrape the topping off and do it

22:26

again. It doesn't mean the cake is ruined. It

22:28

just might mean that you're picking out

22:30

a few kind of burnt dark slivers

22:32

of almond. Yeah And

22:34

they're very sliceable and packable and you

22:36

can put on a table for a bake sale So

22:39

yeah, I know you are very passionate about

22:41

bake sales

22:44

Tell us about them. Why are you so into like

22:47

this thing that my kids school asked me

22:49

to participate in once every single month?

22:51

Really I love that. Yeah,

22:54

it's crazy It's like I get more notices about

22:56

the bake sales at the school than like, you

22:58

know, when the report cards coming out

23:00

Well, they might be on

23:02

to something because it is a surprisingly

23:04

effective way of like bringing communities

23:07

groups of people together And I think

23:09

for me,

23:10

you know

23:12

What I'm thinking about ways that I want

23:14

to show up for my community

23:16

participate in my neighborhood connect

23:19

with other people it often that's a practice

23:21

of of looking inward

23:23

and being like, what is my skill set? What

23:26

can I contribute? What do I know how to do? And

23:28

the first bake sale that I produced was in 2017. So

23:32

I was working in restaurants full time then. And

23:35

I really loved this sort of idea,

23:38

this sort of tension of asking

23:41

a fine dining pastry chef to

23:43

sort of make something that we could sell

23:45

for five or $10. And I love this

23:47

idea of creating an inclusive,

23:50

accessible event for anybody to

23:52

come to if they want and be able

23:54

to kind of taste and meet

23:57

the pastry chef of restaurants that they

23:59

might not even. to

24:00

be able to afford to go to. Maybe

24:05

you can't eat at La Bernadine, but you can

24:07

meet their pastry chef and try

24:09

a treat of theirs for five or ten dollars. I thought that

24:11

was just such a great way of

24:14

bringing the pastry chef community in

24:16

New York City together and

24:19

really opening it up to the community and being

24:21

like,

24:22

anybody can come check it out. Of course, the incredible

24:24

camaraderie the restaurant community

24:27

with pastry chefs and bakers specifically

24:30

was something that has really moved me. The

24:33

way that people are just so like, absolutely,

24:36

what do you need? Where can I be? It makes

24:39

me feel emotional. The bake sales really

24:41

resonated with me and I think with

24:46

a lot of other people here in New York too. So

24:49

it's really something that I've continued to do you

24:52

know, since then. And, you know, I'm producing

24:54

two huge bake sales for the launch of the book,

24:57

which, you know, is a dream

25:00

come true because, you know,

25:02

obviously I'm

25:03

so excited to celebrate the book. So

25:05

we were like partnering up with Kitchen Arts and Letters

25:08

here in New York City, partnering up

25:10

with Now Serving in LA. Yeah,

25:12

a great bookstore. Yeah. Yeah,

25:14

like incredible, passionate, smart, curious

25:16

people who are just like, what can

25:18

we do, let's do this thing. And it's

25:21

been a joy to collaborate with booksellers

25:24

for bake sales for the first time.

25:25

Yeah. And where are the proceeds going? Well,

25:29

in New York, this first time I've been

25:31

able to share this, which is so exciting, but we're

25:33

partnering up with the nonprofit that is

25:36

created and based in New York City called the Bridget Alliance.

25:39

And they sort of provide resources

25:42

and funds for people

25:44

who are seeking abortion

25:47

services and care outside of their home

25:49

state. So a nonprofit

25:51

like that will actually connect the dots for

25:54

a person out of state to a larger

25:56

organization like Planned Parenthood,

25:58

for example, which is the other novel.

26:00

that I've worked with for my bake sales. So

26:02

I really love that through line of kind of keeping

26:04

it local, working with people

26:06

that are living and

26:09

eating in our communities and sort

26:12

of they're a huge part of the bake sale. They'll

26:15

have a big table. They're going to have their

26:17

own offerings and

26:20

it's so, it's incredible to have them in the

26:22

mix and continue

26:25

to bring awareness to the super

26:27

important work that they do.

26:29

That's awesome. Well, thank you, Chef. This

26:31

has been so great to talk with you, and

26:33

I really want to come to your bake sale.

26:35

I hope to see you there. Thank

26:37

you so much for

26:38

having me. The Tasha

26:40

Pickowitz is the author of More Than Cake,

26:49

100 Baking Recipes Built for Pleasure and

26:52

Community. She left us with a recipe for

26:54

one of her, well, she called it a mistake, but it

26:56

sounds incredible, fennel, chocolate,

26:59

and hazelnut spears. Find it at SplendidTable.org.

27:02

["Splendid Table"]

27:09

Esteban Castillo is one of those maddeningly

27:12

talented triple threat types. He's the writer,

27:15

recipe developer, and photographer behind

27:17

his beloved blog and cookbook Chicano Eats, and

27:20

his new book Chicano Bakes, which is all

27:22

about the breads and pastries of Mexico.

27:24

So from the multicolored buns to

27:27

the jiggly jalatinas, to the super

27:29

soaked tres leches cakes. Mexican

27:31

bakeries are among my favorite places to

27:33

be in the world. And Esteban is here to tell

27:35

us about his take on them. Hey,

27:38

Esteban, it's great to see you.

27:39

Hi, Francis. You

27:41

know, the corn tortilla is obviously the staple

27:44

food of so much of Mexico.

27:46

And I think that's maybe the first thing

27:48

a lot of people think of.

27:50

You know, we think of corn. We don't necessarily think of wheat

27:52

flour. but there's such a

27:55

rich bread and pastry

27:57

culture, Tell us what that

27:59

makes. in baking culture has meant

28:01

to you? Yeah, I mean, it's

28:04

really interesting because I feel like when people think

28:06

about Mexican food, they don't necessarily

28:08

think about the sweet side of our

28:10

culture. It plays such

28:13

a huge part in so many different

28:16

festivities and holidays and

28:18

just our day to day that it's

28:20

often overlooked. But

28:23

I grew up in Southern California in Santana

28:25

and I grew up right behind El Toro

28:28

Meat Market. For those of you listening,

28:30

if you live near Santana, take a trip down

28:33

there. So there's a Dora

28:35

Meat Market. They have a little deli section.

28:37

And then right next door is a panaderia.

28:40

So we had access to fresh pan

28:43

dulce every single day. We would just walk across

28:45

the street and you know, we could always

28:47

tell when the panadero was

28:49

taking out fresh loaves and buns

28:52

because you could smell it in the air. I

28:55

miss living in that sort of... Yeah,

28:59

behind a bakery.

29:02

Okay, so what were some of your favorite things? Not

29:05

just there, but if you're walking into

29:07

a panaderia, and I love that word. It's literally

29:09

like bread store, right? Like if you're walking into

29:11

a panaderia, what are the

29:13

things that

29:14

we should look for? Yeah, I mean the panaderia

29:17

experience here in the US is completely different

29:19

than what you're gonna find in Mexico. In Mexico,

29:22

they might specialize in certain different breads,

29:25

but you aren't going to be able to walk into

29:27

a panaderia and order a cake. You know,

29:29

there's going to be someone else who's gonna specialize

29:31

in cakes. But here in

29:33

the US, you walk into

29:35

a panaderia and they're gonna offer you everything.

29:38

Depending on where you live, you are

29:40

going to be able to order cakes or jellos

29:43

or flans or pangulsi or

29:46

even savory things. It really just depends

29:48

on who the panadero is, what they're doing with

29:51

the things that they're making. but you

29:53

can always count on a couple of different

29:56

things and that's gonna

29:58

be the conchas. It's the... these

30:00

sweet buns with a sugar streusel

30:02

on top in the shape of a

30:05

shell, which is how they get their name. Contamin,

30:07

shell, right? Yeah. Okay.

30:11

You're also going to find mantecadas, which are these

30:13

sweet buttery muffins and everybody

30:15

always has them in like a red liner. You

30:18

are also going to find revanadas, which are

30:20

slices of bread with butter

30:22

on top and then sprinkled with sugar. also

30:25

going to find teleras and bolillos

30:27

which are typically used for savory

30:30

things like tortas. So

30:32

much bowls. Oh god they're so good. Which

30:37

are sort of like mexico sugar cookie and

30:41

sometimes when I say polvorones people tend

30:43

to get a little confused because we actually have

30:45

like there's like four or five

30:47

different cookies that share the same name. And

30:54

we also repurpose stuff. The dough for

30:57

Pobolon can be used to make so

30:59

many different other cookies.

31:00

And so it's these

31:02

little core group of things that

31:04

you're going to be able to find at any Panaderie

31:06

here in the US. Okay, that's good to know.

31:09

And you've mentioned Pan dulce. So I

31:11

mean, just translating that means sweet bread,

31:13

right? So that's different from

31:16

pastries and danishes and it's different from

31:18

cakes. It's literally sweetened breads

31:20

and there's a whole tradition

31:23

of them. You mentioned the conchas and the muffins.

31:26

One thing I have noticed and I'm curious about is

31:28

a lot of times there seems to be a very like,

31:31

it's an important emphasis on the color

31:33

of these items. You

31:35

mentioned the muffins come in a red

31:37

liner and conchas, with that sugar,

31:40

that sort of like crusty, streusel-y

31:43

topping, that sugary topping, is often

31:45

colored, right? Sometimes I see it blue, sometimes

31:47

I see it pink. Tell us about that

31:50

tradition of that color. Why is that important?

31:52

I mean, honestly, I just feel like it really,

31:55

it's something that comes natural to us in adding

31:57

color. You know, our culture is already.

32:00

so colorful, you see color everywhere. And

32:02

so I think just embedding

32:04

color into our pastries is just an

32:07

extension of the culture. I've

32:09

never really put a lot of thought into

32:11

it. Yeah, it's just so natural. Yeah,

32:13

it's just so natural. Well, I love that

32:15

you're talking to me from your view of this beautiful

32:18

black and green, like tropical

32:20

plant background, you've got this amazing

32:23

yellow and brown patterned shirt And

32:25

your book is just absolutely saturated

32:28

in color. So that I

32:30

love that Yeah for me color

32:32

has always been a really big part of my

32:34

life and my work that I do I

32:37

went to school up in Humboldt State and

32:40

I really wanted to get into advertising

32:42

and I learned that a little

32:44

too late into my undergrad career

32:47

and so I ended up going into graphic design

32:49

and I went into PR and

32:52

so graphic design has really just

32:55

guided my way through photography

32:58

and the things that I enjoy

33:00

and the things that I really incorporate

33:03

into my work as Chicano eats and

33:05

so I always have to have color. I love

33:07

bright colors. It's the way

33:09

that I get to also infuse my

33:12

queer identity into my work.

33:14

You know these colors are really loud, they're very

33:17

vibrant and saturated and so

33:20

it's just such a huge part of my life. Yeah,

33:22

yeah, Yeah, well, and part of your identity

33:24

too, at least in terms of the work you do, is

33:27

you're known as someone who has developed

33:29

all these recipes that are Mexican,

33:32

sometimes in tradition, but oftentimes in spirit,

33:34

and you use your own flavors, and

33:37

you exhibit a lot of your own personal creativity in your

33:40

cooking. And I'm curious,

33:42

so when you were creating this book, how

33:45

did you decide which

33:47

recipes you wanted to have, like an iconic,

33:50

straight up recipe for? Maybe

33:52

you could call it traditional, you could call it typical, and

33:55

which ones you wanted to put your own spin on. really

34:00

hard question to answer because

34:02

there's really so many things that I wanted

34:04

to incorporate and I had very

34:06

limited space in the book to work with

34:09

and so thinking about

34:11

Bandulce there's over 500 different pieces

34:14

of Bandulce to start with

34:16

so how am I going to work that into a

34:18

book where I can probably get about 80 recipes

34:21

in and so I really

34:23

had to go back and forth but ultimately

34:25

I ended up going with the staples

34:28

that you are going to run into, like

34:30

I was saying earlier, if you walk

34:32

into any panaderie here in the US, you're going to find

34:34

the conchas, the roles a canela,

34:37

which is like our take on cinnamon rolls. And

34:41

all of these other breads. And so that's what

34:43

you're going to find in the book, you're going to find those conchas,

34:45

the bologones, the rebanadas, all

34:48

of those things. But

34:50

they all have a tweak here

34:52

and there.

34:53

Because when I

34:56

develop

34:57

recipes, I tend to be a little analytical

35:00

about what's going in there, why it's going

35:02

in there. You know, there's one recipe in

35:04

there. It's my carrot de

35:07

mango con limon. Carrot is

35:09

a Mexican icebox cake that's

35:12

comprised of a cream cheese

35:14

and lime juice filling that's sweetened

35:17

with condensed milk. And then you have layers

35:19

of Maria cookies in between.

35:22

And so for me, I was like, how can I make

35:24

this just a little bit more special? When

35:27

I think of the combination of cream

35:30

cheese and lime juice, I think of something

35:32

that's going to be very tangy, very tart.

35:35

And so for me, the solution was to incorporate

35:37

mango puree into into

35:40

the filling, it balances everything out. And

35:43

it complements the tanginess and the

35:45

tartness of the lime juice. And so making

35:47

tweaks like that and incorporating little twists

35:49

here and there aren't very difficult. Here's

35:53

another recipe I saw in your book that I am

35:56

fascinated by. Bande elote.

35:58

So it looked at means

36:01

corn but not the the corn that

36:03

you use for tortillas like sweet corn right

36:05

yes tell us about this recipe

36:08

yeah my mom's side of the family

36:11

is known for cooking they are the

36:13

inspirations for everything that I do but she's

36:16

not a baker she

36:18

never has been and

36:20

pandelote was one of the things that she knew

36:22

how to make and it was perfect every

36:24

single time that in flan so

36:27

pandelote is our take on the cornbread.

36:30

What's really interesting about this is that

36:32

it's sort of the consistency of

36:34

it is between like

36:36

a cornbread and like a

36:38

bundt cake. So the crumb is very

36:41

tender but very tight and very

36:43

spongy. And it's one of

36:45

the things that I love about it so much. And

36:48

it starts off with sweet white corn,

36:51

which is what I prefer to use. And whenever

36:53

someone wants to make this recipe, I always

36:56

encourage them to use fresh corn because

36:59

it's going to be a lot more milky and you're going to be able

37:01

to get a lot more starches out of the

37:03

kernels. And that only adds

37:06

to the finished product and the texture. And

37:08

so what's great about this recipe is

37:10

that you don't need any fancy equipment, you can

37:12

make this with a blender and two big bowls.

37:15

You mix all of your dry ingredients

37:18

in one bowl and then the second you mix together

37:20

your sugar, your milk,

37:23

your melted butter, and then the pureed

37:25

corn. And then you incorporate

37:28

the wet into the dry. And

37:30

you pour this into your prepared

37:32

loaf pan. And then an hour

37:34

and like 10 minutes later, you have

37:37

this really beautiful and very, like

37:40

really nicely domed loaf.

37:43

And it's just, it's so delicious. It's

37:45

one of my favorite things to make in the summer when

37:47

corn is just at its peak. And

37:51

yeah, it's so good by itself. But

37:53

I also suggest adding a little

37:55

dab of butter and a drizzle of honey with

37:58

some Caffecyto

38:00

or some chocolatte, and you're

38:02

good to go. Ah, that sounds great.

38:05

Well, thank you so much, Esteban. You're

38:07

so welcome. Thank you again, Francis. It's

38:10

been a great time.

38:11

["Ace de Bon Castillo"]

38:17

Esteban Castillo is the author of Chicano

38:19

Bakes, recipes from Mexican pandulce,

38:22

tamales, and my favorite desserts.

38:25

You can find his recipe for the pande lotu we talked about

38:27

at SplendidTable.org.

38:30

So, self-saucing pudding, actually, it's,

38:32

you know, the name speaks for itself. It's

38:35

the pudding that self-sauces. Basically,

38:38

you put the bake into the

38:41

oven, and a miracle happens, and

38:45

then you get this sauce at the bottom

38:48

of the cake. That's Britton's great

38:50

baker, Chetna Macan, and her spice-filled sweets. I'm

38:54

Francis Lam and this is the Splendid Table

38:57

from APM.

39:01

If you were to start a new business, what would it

39:03

be? Would you want to run a taco truck business,

39:05

a bouncy castle and backyard party business,

39:08

or maybe start your own animal rescue shelter?

39:10

Regardless of what business you want to start or grow,

39:13

you need talented people on your team to make it

39:15

successful. And that's where ZipRecruiter comes

39:17

in. Whether you're looking to fill one position

39:19

or 100, ZipRecruiter's powerful matching

39:22

technology can find the right people for the job.

39:24

With ZipRecruiter, you can find highly qualified

39:26

candidates for a wide range of roles and

39:29

even send them a personal invite to apply.

39:31

Plus, ZipRecruiter offers attention-grabbing

39:33

labels that speak to job flexibility, like

39:36

remote, training provided, urgent, and

39:38

more to really help your job stand out. Let

39:40

ZipRecruiter fill all your roles with the right candidates.

39:43

Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter

39:45

get a quality candidate within the first day.

39:48

Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter

39:51

for free. hardest

40:00

way to hire. For the seventh

40:02

year on the Code Switch podcast, conversations

40:04

about race and identity go way beyond

40:07

the day's headlines. Because we know what's

40:09

part of every person is part of every

40:11

story. We're bringing that perspective

40:14

with new episodes every week. on

40:16

the Code Switch podcast from NPR.

40:31

I'm Francis Lam, and this is the show for curious

40:33

cooks and eaters.

40:35

We have been baking up a storm today with New

40:37

York pastry chef, Natasha Pikowitz, Mexican-American

40:40

cookbook author Esteban Castillo, and

40:43

now one of my favorite

40:45

ever contestants on the great British baking show,

40:48

Chetna Macan. Ever since her season

40:50

that show, Chetna has, I don't know, like transformed

40:52

herself into a cookbook producing machine. Her

40:55

sixth book came out last year called

40:57

Chetna's Easy Baking with a Twist

41:00

of Spice. So

41:02

hi Chetna, it's so good to see you. Hello,

41:05

hello, good to see you too. I, you

41:07

know, I, you know, first came upon

41:09

you, I I think as many people do, I watched

41:11

you on the Great British Baking Show.

41:14

I was surprised to read in your new

41:16

baking book that when you grew up in India,

41:20

you were in a community where Western style baking wasn't

41:22

really a thing and your mom was actually the

41:24

only person you knew who owned

41:26

an oven and actually loved

41:29

to bake cakes. How did she get into that?

41:33

I think she just loves

41:36

trying new things and she is still exactly the same. still

41:38

exactly the same so she's a very curious

41:41

cook which I love about

41:43

her and at that time because

41:46

no one else was baking at home

41:49

there was some bakeries not many where

41:51

you could buy like certain only few cakes

41:54

so she did I I remember we were

41:57

still in school. In one summer holiday she

41:59

did a baking

42:00

class and learned how to

42:02

make a few cakes,

42:04

basic cakes. And that's when she bought this oven,

42:07

which by the way, she still has. One

42:10

day I really need to take a picture of that when

42:12

I visit her. But so it's

42:14

like a round, like

42:17

a casserole box, just a big, big.

42:20

That just plugs into one room

42:22

to another. So sometimes she would plug it in

42:24

the corridor, sometimes in our bedroom, sometimes

42:27

in her bedroom. It was just

42:29

amazing. So obviously it was quite limited

42:31

what could go into that oven because it

42:34

was like a round, certain shape.

42:37

So she would always just bake round

42:40

cakes. But

42:42

then that was the cakes you knew, round cakes. Absolutely.

42:46

And we weren't complaining. And

42:49

we were very, very pleased that she

42:52

was baking. So yeah,

42:54

I think it's amazing

42:57

that at that time, her generation,

43:00

she was trying out something which

43:02

was not a popular thing to do. And

43:05

it's not like she could discuss with her friends, or this has

43:07

gone wrong. It was literally trial and

43:09

error.

43:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And did you take it

43:11

up at that time or did you take up baking later?

43:15

Actually, that's when I started as

43:17

well. So after she had done her class

43:19

and she learned the basics, you

43:22

know, I learned from her just basic cakes.

43:25

I'm not talking fancy cakes. I'm talking

43:27

vanilla cake and one of her very famous cakes,

43:29

the date cake, which is eggless, which

43:32

is why she makes them so often because,

43:34

you know, a lot of people in India don't

43:36

eat eggs. And

43:38

that's when I started baking a

43:40

few basic cakes. And at

43:42

that point I started baking

43:45

birthday cakes for us all. So yeah,

43:48

it has been, It has

43:51

been something that I've loved from

43:53

a very young age.

43:55

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, fast forward however

43:57

many years later and here you are baking up

43:59

a store. in front of your entire

44:01

country, actually the entire world, because

44:04

that show is popular in the world over. So

44:07

there are so many amazing sounding recipes in your book.

44:09

I definitely want to talk to you about a whole bunch of them. One

44:12

that really caught my eye was the

44:15

Masala Chai Trezleche's

44:17

cake. I

44:20

love Trezleche's cake. It's

44:22

a very common, typical

44:24

cake all over Latin America. I think of it

44:26

mostly as Mexican, but it's a hobby all over Latin America

44:29

and it's soaked in cream

44:33

and condensed milk and evaporated milk. It's

44:35

just so smushy and delicious. But

44:38

I didn't realize that

44:40

he had traveled over, you know,

44:43

back into Europe. Tell me how you

44:45

came upon Thrissliches. So

44:47

this was quite interesting because I live

44:50

in a quite a small town

44:52

here in the UK and there

44:55

is a little baking group here. And

44:59

they meet once a month, and

45:01

they choose a subject or some theme,

45:04

and then they bake according to that theme,

45:06

all of them. And once I went on

45:08

Bake Off, I had not heard of that group beforehand,

45:11

but once I went on Bake Off, one

45:13

of the ladies from the group emailed

45:15

me and said, "'Why don't you come to our group?'" And

45:18

I said, why not? So I went there. And

45:20

the theme was, I think the theme was cakes

45:22

from around the world. And

45:25

I remember at that point,

45:27

she actually named it Three

45:29

Milk Cake, which I will remember

45:31

forever because she didn't call it dress the

45:33

chest. She just said Three Milk Cake and

45:36

I ate it and I'm such a cake

45:38

fan that I fell in love. It was

45:41

moist, it was delicious, it was

45:43

melt in your mouth kind of deliciousness.

45:47

And I had never heard or had

45:49

that cake before. And that

45:51

actually stayed with me. obviously, you know,

45:54

there were no recipes. She was not giving out

45:56

recipes. Everyone had just baked. And so

45:58

when I was doing this book.

46:00

I thought, you know, I have

46:02

to do my own version and

46:04

who doesn't like masala chai? So, you

46:06

know, I thought that's it combine

46:08

the two And here is that

46:11

recipe.

46:11

Oh, I love it. How do you make your masala

46:14

chai? Like what are the spices that you like? So

46:17

there's actually a whole lot of spices that go

46:19

in and they vary from family

46:22

to family home to home So I

46:24

like to put green cardamoms a

46:27

little bit of lots of actually

46:29

fresh ginger. It could be grated

46:32

with the skin on and also

46:34

you could add a few cloves in there.

46:37

You could add a little bit of cinnamon

46:39

stick in there, but these are the basic

46:41

ones and then people carry on and

46:43

sometimes add star anise, they'll add

46:46

fennel seeds, but I usually

46:48

stop at the three, four spices.

46:51

I love black pepper and masala

46:53

too. I love that little bit of heat that comes with it. Ah,

46:58

yeah, no, I don't add black pepper to

47:00

chai. But yeah,

47:02

having that mixture soaked into the

47:04

cake must just be unreal.

47:08

Exactly, and that tea flavor

47:10

as well. So what I did was I

47:12

broke the two things separately. So

47:15

I added the tea into the soak,

47:17

into the milk mixture, and I added the spices

47:19

into the cake because I wanted the whole cake

47:22

to taste of the spices. So I

47:25

divided the flavors into both

47:27

the cake and the syrup.

47:29

I love that. Cool, let's go to another

47:31

one. This is, I

47:34

mean, even the title is mesmerizing.

47:37

It is a chocolate and

47:39

coconut spiced self-saucing

47:41

pudding. So what

47:44

is a self-saucing pudding?

47:46

So self-saucing pudding, actually

47:49

it's, you know, the name speaks

47:51

for itself. It's a pudding that you... It sounds incredible.

47:56

It's like putting that self sources.

48:00

Basically, you

48:02

put the bake into the oven and when

48:04

you get the bake out, you will have

48:06

a little sauce at the bottom of the

48:09

pudding because the sauce

48:11

has come out from the

48:13

cake mixture and that's

48:16

why it is called it because, you know, kind

48:18

of a miracle happens in the oven

48:21

and then you get this sauce at the

48:23

bottom of the cake.

48:24

Okay, so first of all, just to be

48:27

clear to our listeners, when we say pudding here,

48:29

we you mean in the British sense. So it's actually baked, it's

48:31

more like a cake, like a sticky toffee pudding, not a pudding.

48:33

And in the American sense, which we usually use

48:36

to talk about a custard. So this comes

48:38

out of the oven, it's a cake, but then

48:40

when you

48:41

take a spoonful of the cake, there's

48:44

a sauce on the bottom. How do you

48:46

make it? What happens? I know

48:48

you just referred to as a miracle. Do

48:50

you do an incantation, or is there actually like a mixture

48:53

of ingredients that makes this happen?

48:54

So, you know,

48:57

I'm not going to get into the science of this

48:59

because I think baking is magical

49:02

and this is

49:05

what, you know, it is true though.

49:07

But basically you

49:09

make a lovely light sponge cake

49:11

mixture and then you put

49:14

that into your tin

49:16

or, you know, whatever dish you're

49:19

using and then you make a lovely sauce.

49:21

So in this case, I have made the sauce

49:23

with brown sugar, cocoa powder,

49:26

a bit of water, and also I've

49:28

added coconut milk because of the flavor

49:30

I wanted. So you have this

49:32

runny liquid delicious

49:35

sauce, which you then pour over

49:37

the cake mixture. So when you put

49:40

the cake pudding in

49:42

the oven, the syrup is on the top

49:44

and the cake is at the bottom. But when

49:46

it comes out, you have this fluffy

49:48

looking gorgeous chocolate cake. And when you

49:51

scoop into it, you'll see a

49:53

pool of chocolate sauce in

49:55

the bottom.

49:55

Oh God, that's incredible. But

49:58

I imagine during the baking, Obviously

50:00

to switch

50:02

position, they had to kind of like

50:04

soak their way through each other, right? So

50:07

it infuses, both

50:08

of them are infused with the flavor of the other, I imagine.

50:11

Absolutely right. So the cake

50:14

in this instance, in this pudding is

50:16

really moist and you

50:18

can over bake it and then you won't get much

50:21

moisture. So obviously timing

50:24

is key. But

50:26

yeah, the pudding

50:28

here is really, really moist

50:30

and kind of soaked through.

50:32

Oh God, sounds awesome. And

50:35

it is so good, especially in this cold weather.

50:38

It is actually, even I wanted to

50:40

make it right now.

50:41

After you've made it, I'm sure 35

50:44

times to get to work, you're going to let go make it after

50:46

this call. So the

50:48

last one I want to talk to you about too is a savory

50:50

recipe. You have a lot of savory recipes in the book. And

50:53

this is the chana dal stuffed

50:55

yogurt bread. So the

50:57

chana dal is like a spiced chickpea

50:59

stuffing. But tell us about the yogurt

51:02

bread because

51:03

it looks like it comes together super fast. It's

51:06

not a yeasted bread.

51:09

But it's got yogurt and lemon and

51:11

flour. Tell us about that, the

51:13

yogurt bread and how that works.

51:16

So this particular recipe was inspired

51:18

by an Indian bread called bhatura

51:21

and bhatura is something we

51:23

make in the North India and it's

51:26

usually served with cholle which is chickpea

51:28

curry and this

51:30

bhatura is like you said it hasn't

51:32

got yeast it's a quick dough

51:35

that you prepare with yogurt which actually

51:37

then gives it that lightness

51:39

and that fluffiness like like a pillowy texture.

51:43

And I thought, you know, that's a great

51:46

dough. Why why don't I use it

51:48

for flatbread instead

51:50

of frying like make a paratha out of it?

51:54

So, yeah, so that's what I did.

51:56

and Chana Dal is, yeah,

51:58

it's quite a...

52:00

meaty dal, you

52:02

know lentils there are so many kinds of lentils

52:04

but and Every lentil has got

52:06

their own quality their own flavor. This

52:09

one is quite Heavy

52:11

it's quite meaty and

52:14

that's why I chose this and I thought I'm

52:16

gonna add something more

52:18

kind of

52:20

Rich to this which is why I added feta

52:22

to this and it will add that saltiness

52:25

and that creaminess, richness to

52:27

the filling. So these are

52:29

super quick to make, super, super

52:32

quick to make. And once you've made them, you can have

52:34

them piping hot, but you can also have them at room

52:36

temperature. So they're great for carrying

52:39

it for picnics or lunchboxes

52:41

or whatever, or make it beforehand

52:43

for your meals.

52:44

Yeah. And like not having to wait for

52:46

the bread to proof is so interesting. Yes.

52:49

It's just baking soda and the, and the yogurt and

52:51

lemon reacting to give it the puff, right?

52:53

Absolutely. And it doesn't have

52:55

like a puff, like a puri or

52:58

a bhatura, but it has

53:00

that lightness to it. So the

53:02

actual dough, because it's so thin,

53:05

rolled out thinly, it's got that,

53:08

yeah, it's got that pillowy texture

53:10

to it.

53:11

Oh, cool. Do you ever make it without

53:13

the stuffing just to make the flatbread? Yes,

53:16

yes, absolutely, which is what is called bhatura.

53:18

So if you don't make it with the stuffing,

53:21

You can roll it out and defry

53:23

it and then it puffs up like a ball

53:26

and it is so so

53:28

good

53:28

Well,

53:30

okay Well, I am super excited

53:33

to take out this book and I didn't realize you have

53:35

like another book coming out I think this book came

53:37

out last year and you another book coming out this year I

53:40

can't imagine how hard-working you are and

53:43

how you just keep cranking these books out But

53:45

I look forward to catching up have?

53:48

Yes, thank you so much. Yes, I've got a

53:50

new book out in the summer. It's called

53:53

Chetna's Indian Feast. So,

53:55

it's very different to this one. But

53:57

it's all about bringing together a

53:59

friend.

54:00

and family. Terrific. Well,

54:02

thank you and I look forward to it.

54:03

Thank you so much. Chetna

54:07

Macan is the author of Chetna's Easy

54:10

Baking with a Twist of Spice. And her next

54:12

book coming out in August of 2023

54:15

is Chetna's Indian Feasts. You

54:18

can find her recipe for that magical

54:20

chocolate coconut spiced self-saucing

54:23

pudding at SplendidTable.org.

54:26

And that is our show for the week. Thank

54:29

you for listening. Go make a cake.

54:31

We'll talk to you next week.

54:37

ATM studios are run by Chandra Cavani,

54:40

Alex Shaffer, and Joanne Griffin. Beth Perlman is

54:42

our executive producer and the splendid able was created

54:44

by Sally Swift and Lynn Mazzotto-Casper.

54:47

It's made every week by technical producer Jennifer

54:49

Lubke, producer Erica Romero, digital

54:52

producer James Napoli, and managing

54:54

producer Sally Swift. Be

54:56

sure to subscribe to our podcast on Spotify, Apple,

54:59

or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Take

55:01

some time to leave us a review, especially if you like

55:03

us. I'm Francis Lamb, and this is

55:05

8PM Studios.

55:12

Emily Hanford's reporting is changing

55:15

the way children learn to read. The

55:17

New York Times, Time Magazine, and

55:19

countless teachers say Emily brought a

55:22

serious problem to light. Many schools

55:24

are using reading lessons based on an

55:26

idea that scientists debunked

55:29

a long time ago. On her new podcast,

55:32

Sold a Story, Emily looks into

55:34

four influential people who've helped spread

55:36

that discredited theory. Go to your

55:39

favorite podcast app and subscribe

55:41

to

55:41

Sold a Story.