Eat My Globe

Interview with NY Times Bestselling Author, Michael Ruhlman

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hi everybody. My name is Simon Majumdar. On today's very special episode of Eat My Globe: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food, I'm going to be talking to one of food and cooking's most thoughtful authors and I have to say one of the most fascinating men to have dinner with. His books have become New York Times bestsellers, including, to mention a few, Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen, and he has also written books with acclaimed chefs like Thomas Keller – for those of you who don't know, he's the chef proprietor of the French Laundry; Michael Symon and Eric Ripert, the chef proprietor of Le Bernardin and someone who will be on the show at some point this series. He has written a list of essential technique books that I have in my own kitchen such as Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing, which he did with Brian Polcyn. Egg: A Culinary Exploration of the World's Most Versatile Ingredient, The Book of Schmaltz – which I love – The Love Song to a Forgotten Fat, and Pâté, Confit, Rillette: Recipes from the Craft of Charcuterie. So he's written a lot of books. He has also won the James Beard Award for his writing. And I'm pleased to say he is now my mate. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the one and only Michael Ruhlman. How are you doing?

Michael Ruhlman (“MR”):                                           

I'm doing fantastic. How are you, Simon?

SM:

I am very, very, very well, and I'm so pleased. I've been, you know, we've been. . . . We're in season 14, and I've been trying to think of where you would fit in to this series. We've been going for seven years or eight years now I think.

So, I'm so pleased and you're such an amazing gentleman. So, before we start anything else I know you have so much going on so perhaps now. . . What events have you got now? Substacks, books. Just tell people what you're doing because I'm sure it's going to be interesting to them.

MR:

Well right now I'm working on something that's only tangentially related to food. I'm working on my second young adult novel.

SM:

Okay.

MR:

I wrote the first young adult novel. It’s for Penguin. It was called, If You Can't Take the Heat. It's about a young privileged 16-year-old who breaks his leg and goes to work in a professional kitchen and it changes the way he sees the world. And this book is about a journey through Spain with a, a 16-year-old with his estranged father. And his life gets kind of turned around and food becomes a sort of metaphor for a reawakening. He's tasting things he's never tasted before and his senses come alive. He's been grieving his deceased mother. And so, food is tangentially related. But what I really like is it's fun to write fiction now.

SM:

Yeah.

MR:

And so that's the big project now. I also teach a course at NYU in food journalism to grad students, a graduate program. And that's fun. And I am always working on my Substack, which is ruhlman.substack.com, where I write about food and other food related issues, but also cultural stuff about, you know, the movies and TV we're watching, the meals we're cooking, new cocktails. So, it's sort of, it's sort of like my own personal little magazine, if you will.

SM:

Oh I love that. I'm hopefully going to start a substack. I haven't got my head around it yet, but we're going to start a substack fairly soon. I'm not as good at it as you, but hopefully I've got things that I can write that people will enjoy.

And I love the idea of Spain. So, I don't know if you know, but I had a home. Well, my father had a home in Spain for 42 years and actually I went to every state. I went to, you know, Extremadura. So, when I was a little bit older than the person you were talking about, I went to every state. So, it's a really, I love that.

Okay, as I mentioned earlier, you have, you've worked with so many terrific chefs. And I have a lot of people who listen to this show, you know, we have a lot of listeners, and a lot of them are writers, a lot of them want to be ghost writers for want of a better word. And I, before we start talking about some of the other things, what I wanted to do was talk to you about how you got those jobs. How did you get hold of Eric Ripert, did you just go to him? Did he come to you? And I know that will be very hard for people to understand. So, before we do anything else, could you start telling us about that?

MR:

Oh sure. Well, the first one, the first chef that I worked for and I started working for him before my second book, The Making of a Chef, was coming out. The Making of a Chef is about my journey through culinary school.

SM:

Yeah.

MR:                                       

As a journalist acting as a student, not actually enrolled, but just acting as one, but I learned how to cook there. And when I'd finished that book, I was fascinated by the whole industry of cooking and the whole restaurant culture and the whole ethos of the restaurant. And I knew I wanted to keep writing about it, but after I'd finished the book, I couldn't sell another book. I couldn't figure out a subject. And I thought, I learned how to cook. I'll get a job as a cook, maybe even get some health insurance. I don't know.

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

So, I went out to a barbecue restaurant in the middle of Ohio. It's called Sticks, because that's where it was, in the Sticks, a barbecue joint.

SM:

Wow.

MR:

I knew that Susie Heller, who owned and ran it, was really well connected in the chef world from other stuff I'd written about Cleveland chefs. I was living in Cleveland at the time. I showed her my stuff. I showed her the notice of my first book. I showed her the catalog copy for Making of a Chef. And I said, Susie, can you find me the best chef in Cleveland to work for? I want to keep writing about this business, but I need a job. I'm broke, and I need an unemployed, and need a job. She looked at my stuff and said, wow, I didn't know you did all this stuff, Michael. I'm working with Thomas Keller at the French Laundry and we're looking for a writer. And you know. . .

SM:

Wow.

MR:

. . . my head just started reverberating.

SM:

How does that happen? I mean, that's an amazing job to get.

MR:

Yes, Simon a broke unemployed writer who's never written nationally about food walks into a barbecue joint in the middle of Ohio and basically walks out with tickets to the French Laundry to work with the most exciting chef, the most exciting restaurant. . .

SM:

Yep.

MR:

. . . and write his cookbook. That's what happened. That, Simon, is called the gift from God.

SM:

Yep, it really is.

MR:

Honest, I mean I am I'm a steadfast agnostic, but that's something that's not explainable to me. Anyway, so that's how I got that first job. It was a total fluke. It was luck. It was divine providence. I went out there on sort of on spec. She flew me out there. Susie flew me out there. And after just a day, we realized that we were pretty compatible. And Thomas said, you know, don't worry. You'll have this job.

SM:

Wow.

MR:

And so, I wrote that book. And once I'd written that book, and that book became phenomenally successful.

SM:

Sure, absolutely.

MR:

After that, because I had something few journalists had at the time, which was a solid knowledge of culinary fundamentals, and had something that chefs didn't have at the time, the ability to write. I was a journalist. Those two came together in the late 90s at exactly the right time. We were just sort of, all this food stuff is just about to explode. So, that again, my timing was fortuitous.

After I did The French Laundry and people saw how successful it was that opened the doors I could go into any kitchen anywhere. It brought my attention. . . it brought Eric's attention to me and his agent actually contacted me. . .

SM:

Wow.

MR:

. . . to ask I wanted to do a weird kind of art cooking book with Eric. And I said, yeah, of course I do. And that's how Return to Cooking was written. Michael Symon asked me to work on his cookbook. And I did, he's a friend. We were living in Cleveland. I love the guy and I love his food. He's a sort of a mechanical genius in the kitchen.

SM:

When we went, when we met the last time, it was in Cleveland. . .

MR:

That's right. So, we went to Lola.

SM:

. . . and we went to one of Michael's restaurants. And I always remember that because we sat there, we had the most extraordinary and fascinating conversation. And then Michael wasn't there, but they delivered just the best food. And we sat there and they wouldn't charge us for it. And, we paid, you know, tips and all of that. So, we had a great time. So, whenever you mentioned Michael, I knew him from The Next Iron Chef and you obviously knew him personally as well. So, that always reminds me of Michael's just such an amazing cook, but I'm sorry to interrupt, but that was such an amazing time.

MR:

That was, I remember it well too, Simon. It was a terrific meal and a terrific evening and it was great that we were able to connect in Cleveland in person.

SM:

I know. But you, anyway, so you went to Michael Symon and then you went on to yourself, but then he began to write a lot of books just from you for that. And that's one of the things I wanted to ask you. When you were working with these acclaimed chefs, they're very much, how did, again, this is something that people who listen to this will want to know.

Was it a joint effort? Or were they the teachers and you were just writing, that was your job was just to write? Or as I said was it a team effort?

MR:

These books are always team efforts with a lot of people. For The French Laundry, I didn't have to do any of the recipes. Susie Heller, who's the woman who brought me out there, she did all the recipes and recipe testing so I didn't have to write any recipes. For Michael Symon's book, I had to do the story that had notes and write the recipes.

SM:

Wow, okay.

MR:

So, it varies from project to project. But for the most part they're looking for me to shape their cuisine into a story. And that's what I try to do most.

SM:

And when you say created into a story, what would you suggest that is? Because is that talking about their history? Is that talking about their philosophy? Or is it a bit of both?

MR:

It's certainly, it's those things. But it's also helping to give them context and well, you know, for, for The French Laundry, there was so much to write about. First of all, there was, the question of how does this, how did this 40-year-old chef, who's who, who had no classical training, who grew up in South Florida in the 1970s, which was a culinary wasteland at the time, with no formal training, move from South Florida. How did he become the most revered chef in the country with no training and no real love of culinary anything when he was young? You know, most French chefs say that, God, I've loved it since I was a kid. Thomas had no inkling of what he was doing until a single chef asked him why we cook. And when the chef said we cook to nourish people. Something clicked and he decided then he would be a chef. He was 17 or 18 years old. So, it was the answer to that question. How does how does this happen? And what, who is the person? What is the brain behind the man who has generated such an extraordinary restaurant and such a groundbreaking restaurant.

SM:

Yes.

MR:

At the time, it was, it was second to none in the world.

SM:

Of course.

MR:

So, it's a look at that. For Gabriel Kreuther, I did his cookbook.

SM:

Yes.

MR:

I got that job because the original writer had to quit and leave town and move for personal reasons and the editor of that book was the editor of some of my books and asked me to take over the writing. So, pretty much all the time I’ve been asked to do it because of my, my work. And that's how I get the job and then I, then I just look for stories like I do as a journalist. I ask questions, I hang out, I pay attention, and come up with a story to put the chefs in context, put their food in context.

SM:

So, you will stay a long time with those chefs and you'll really get to know them before you start writing.

MR:

I'll. . . yes, I will, and, and taking notes the whole while. For, for instance for The French Laundry Cookbook I actually lived at Keller’s house for a month and a half.

SM:

Wow.

MR:

So, that was an extraordinary luxury because I was able to just chat with him. And when he was finished cooking, we had a glass of wine in his little house in Yountville, and talked about food and cooking. It was a great opportunity. Usually don't get that much access or that much time. The hardest one I did was Jean Georges. I ghost wrote his memoir. And that was very difficult because he's an incredibly smart individual. But he's a classic ADD chef. He's a very physical person. He's not a verbal person. And he's certainly not a verbal person in his third language. So, it was tough to draw stories out of him. So that was a hard one. So, it varies from chef to chef. But it's always great fun meeting them and learning their food and understanding what drives them, how they got here, why it matters.

SM:

Which is fantastic. The idea of staying with Thomas Keller for a month and a half is just extraordinary to me. And I've never done ghost writing. I don't know why, but it just hasn't happened. But that would just be fantastic.

MR:

Well, here's something interesting about that. Because the stories were so great and he wanted the story to be a part of the book that was one of his biggest requests, I want this book to be filled with stories, I wrote it in third person. I did not write it in Thomas's voice.

SM:

Wow.

MR:

I wrote it as a journalist. So, it was almost a journalistic cookbook. The editor didn't like that. The editor wanted it in first person from Thomas's point of view. So, I rewrote the whole book in first person. And that's how that came about. So that's something that most people don't really know.

SM:

Gosh, that is great. But what I'd love to do now is to ask you about your own books.

MR:

Mm-hmm.

SM:

Because those are something that I just, I love. You know, like I said, I have this book of Charcuterie here, which I have, you know, all the time. And not that I do a lot of charcuterie because I'm not in the house very often, but I just, I love reading it as well, which is another passion, because even if you aren't going to do anything charcuterie based, you still love reading that book. And what I do about you, or what I say about you, is people will still love reading their books, even if you're not going to do, yeah, they're not going to do something with a ratio or do something. And that's very important. So, what I did, and I don't know whether this will get to you, because we're a traditional food history series, you know, I've done things. So, what I've done for this year is I do four essays that I write and four interviews. That's what I'm doing. And I'm interviewing everyone. And last year, we did an interview with Paula Johnson, who's from Smithsonian about her moving Julia Child’s kitchen down to there. So, we have a lot of really good fun.

So, what I've got here is I've got five of your books and what I wanted to do if you if you could do this. If you can from each one mention the history of each one the, the food kind of things that you discovered when you're doing them that's more historical. So here's the ideas but if you've got any others you can choose your own. So, let's start with Ratio.

I mean, is there anything from the Ratio book that you just thought, this is a really fascinating piece of history? What could I, you know, do I bring this out in the book or, you know, so tell me about that.

MR:

Ratio, first of all, I don't write a book because I know everything about it, about a subject, and then go sit down and write it. I usually choose a subject about which I know very little and explore an idea. And that's what I did with Ratio. I'd met an old German cook at the Culinary Institute when I was doing my research there. And he said, you know, you see all these books, his books were lined with thousands of books and sagging from the weight. And he says, you want to see, I can show you what's in all these books and what's all the food in there. I can show you in a page and a half. Would you like to see it? I said, yeah, you bet I would. So, he turned around to his file, opened a drawer and pulled out a sheet and a half of paper with culinary ratios on it that he'd made. Hollandaise sauce was one, three eggs, six yolks per third per pound. And I love the precision of it, you know, the hollandaise is an old, old French sauce. But we know we need eggs in it, and we know we need butter in it. Without either one of those, it ceases to be hollandaise. But is it still hollandaise with lemon juice? Basically, yeah. You need a reduction. You need salt and pepper.

He. . . it had, it had reduced the fundamentals of cooking to its very essence to its, to its, to the diamonds of it. And that's what I wanted to explore. So, that's how Ratio came about and I knew this was a great idea and would help people cook. I guess my goals and cooking are in writing about food is to encourage people to cook. Because when we cook our own food, the world is better. And that's the bottom line here. So, no one had ever done this before. I hadn't seen any Ratios until Hessner showed it to me. So, it’s kind of without historical precedent as far as I know.

SM:

But tell me about the other ratios that you dealt with in there because again, people listening will find this very, and if they haven’t bought the book, they really should. Tell me about the other ratios that you had in there.

MR:

One was a bread ratio. Now, there's a standard baker's percentages, they're called. These are actually ratios for all kinds of baking. And ratios is really where ratios shine, especially because of the weight of the flour. The weight of the flour is not uniform.

A cup of flour can weigh anywhere between 4 ounces and 6 ounces, which is a 50% difference. So, if you have something that requires, say, 4 cups of flour, you could be getting, you could have 20 ounces in your, by doing the math, or considerably more, which is why recipes don't work as well when you measure flour by volume, but rather you should measure it by weight. So, ratios are all weight based. And the bread ratio is simple. It's five parts flour and three parts water. That's really, that's the ratio. You need some yeast. It varies. You can use a little yeast or a lot. The less you use, the more time it will take for that yeast to grow. But for the most part, you need some salt for flavor. But again, that's to taste. And it's, you can do it as percentage. It's usually about 2% by weight. And that's the salt. But that's all it is. If you know that bread is five parts flour and three parts water, that this will give you a beautiful loaf of bread, then you can riff on that. You can turn that into a focaccia. You can turn that into a baguette. You can turn it into a bowl. You can add chocolate and cherries to it, which is a fabulous bread.

SM:

Sounds lovely.

MR:

So, that's the power of ratios, and that's what I wanted to explore. There's a ratio for quick breads. There's a ratio for pancakes. And I love how it's all interconnected. If you look at the dough batter continuum, it's all a matter of the proportion of water that you add to flour. A crepe has much more.

SM:

I love that, the dough batter continuum. That's fantastic.

MR:

Yeah, it's it really is all one thing if you just if you add so much water you're gonna have crepe batter not bread, So, so, it's it showed me how interconnected all these all these preparations were.

SM:

What happens about people's ability though? So, there are some people who don't have. . . . I cannot cook bread and it doesn't matter what ratio I have.

MR:

Then, nope, that's wrong.

SM:

Okay, so tell me why that's wrong.

MR:

I think that in addition to ratios, you have to have some common sense and practical. . . .

SM:

Well, I'm no good for that. I'm definitely no good for that.

MR:

You know, it's always said we cook with all our senses and one of those is common. And you need to use your common sense. You need to. . . . There are certain techniques, for instance, you can mix the dough too much. If you mix it too much, it cannot rise properly. If you let it sit too long, it will deflate and you don't get a good proof. So, there are all kinds of little things that you have to be aware of. And it does take, it's not just a matter of knowing a ratio. It is a matter of having some cooking skill. So, you're right. But I would love to bake bread with you, Simon, because it, you know, the oldest food preparation we know. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MR:

. . . it can't be that hard that you can't make a decent loaf of bread.

SM:

We'll see. I do, I do make bread every now and again.

Okay, so let's have a look at the next book, which is Ruhlman’s Twenty, because again, you write about these scientific versions of it, but you have this, you have your own ability to do it. And so, I don't think it's all about the science, but you tell me about Ruhlman’s Twenty.

MR:

Well, Ruhlman’s Twenty came about when I was at a writers conference. I was sitting around. We were having a cocktail after the day's seminars and Bill LeBlond, who was then at Chronicle, and I were chatting and he said, you know, Michael, my cooking just is plateaued. I don't I don't feel like I'm getting better and maybe I'm getting worse. And I'm not sure. You know, I'm not sure why that is or what to do. And I said, Bill, there's only like 20 things you need to know in order to cook everything. And he froze. His eyes got big.

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

He pointed his finger right in my face and said, that's a book. And he wrote down on a piece of paper, the 20 things you need to know to cook everything, tore it off and said, this is our book. And so it was. I thought about it and said, God, it's more than five and it's less than 100. 20 is a pretty good number.

SM:

Now, what do you suggest then for 20? Give us some of the ideas for it because again, me saying there’s 20 ideas or 20 things for me to know how to cook always sounds a bit, you know, odd because I'm cooking a curry now. That’s very different from cooking a French dish.

MR:

Oh yeah, very different. This is a very fundamental technique. I wouldn't get into a curry in 20 or how to make a curry, but I would get into sauce. To understand how a sauce works is one of the chapters. The first chapter I'm very proud of. It's simply called Think. It's simply called Think. You have to sit down and think. You have to read a recipe all the way through and visualize yourself moving through it.

Visualize how thick your sauce might be when it's getting to the right consistency and how thick those bubbles are before you begin cooking. Remove anything that might hinder you beforehand. You know, take the car keys and the half full glass of milk off the counter before you start cooking your food. It gets in the way. It clutters your mind as much as it does your actual space. So, the ability to think is very important in cooking and it was part of what's fun about doing a book like this and made me think about what's the most important thing.

Thomas Keller, I said, what's the most important thing you tell your cooks when they come in? What's the most important thing they need to do? And he said, you know, salt and pepper, seasoning. In fact, then he said, well, salt, really. And that stuck with me for years. And so certainly that was technique number two is how do you salt? How to know all the things that salt can do.

Now in Charcuterie, I've seen the power of salt and that's you know, that's what something I learned from charcuterie and didn't quite realize was how powerful salt is. There's a reason why people were in the ancient times paid, paid. . . Their salary was paid in salt, which is part of where the word salary comes from. It preserved food. It seasons food. It, it, in liquid form, it penetrates in different ways and pulls flavor in. This is controversial, but I believe it actually pulls flavor into the protein, into a pork chop, into a chicken that you're brining. So, it's absolutely fascinating to look at the history of salt and how it moved through into where we are now, really taking it for granted. But people who didn't have salt before refrigeration had no way of preserving their food. Unless they were in a very dry climate, and they could they could just dry it before it rotted. But for the most part, it had, that was our main preservation. And so again charcuterie. I love the. . . Charcuterie came about because I love duck confit.

SM:

Me too.

MR:

I, I love just the idea of it, you know, you've got this, this rich fatty meat and you season it with salt and let it cure for a night and then you poach it in fat, and then you let it ripen in that fat. And then you take it out and you crisp it up and you serve it on some diced potatoes that have been cooked in some of that same fat. And you've got an absolutely exquisite meal. And when I learned that we didn't create duck confit for our personal pleasure. We learned to confit duck so we could stay alive in the winter. This happened in Gascony, which is in the southwest corner of France. That's the home of duck and goose confit and foie gras. When I realized that we had created this ingenious food preparation in order to survive, I said, I've got to find out what else don't I know? What else did we create to preserve our food that still results in our best food today? And that's how Charcuterie began. I called my friend. I knew nothing about it. I'd been writing for the New York Times a story about the Certified Master Chef exam. I'd met Brian Polcyn there, a chef in Detroit. I knew he'd been teaching charcuterie at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Michigan. And he was an expert at charcuterie. I said, Brian, do you want to write a book?

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

I want to explore charcuterie. And he had three restaurants and five kids in the house. I had no time whatsoever, but like a good chef, he said, you bet. I'll take on more work. So that's how we got to explore charcuterie. And I got to explore sausages and smoking and dry curing and pâtés and all of these things and look at their history and where they came from and why. Pâtés came about to use all the food, use all the trim. We didn't create pâté because it was this elegant thing. We figured out of this ingenious way that if we mix this protein with this animal fat and maybe add some pistachios and some other garnish inside and cook it very slowly in a water bath, we'll have something edible. You don't just have something edible, you have something fantastic if you've done it right. So that's, again, how interconnected, how utilitarian cooking began and how as we've advanced as, as a civilization has become more, more refined. So that's extraordinary.

SM:

That's great. And it's one of those things. What is it people say about Gascony, the Gascogne dichotomy or something? They always say that because you have, you know, duck confit and you have foie gras and you have brandy and you have all these things, and yet they have the lowest rate of heart attacks in France.

MR:

Right, that's the French paradox as they call it. Right.

SM:

The French paradox as they call it, yes. And that's just for me is just fascinating. I find that. . .

MR:

I think it, I do too. I find it fascinating too. And it just shows you that our, the way we eat, our fear of fat is kind of wrong-headed. I mean, you can't, you shouldn't eat tons of fat, but you shouldn't be afraid of it either. It makes, and it seems, what drives me crazy and why I love French cuisine and the French appetites is that they eat food because it's joyous.

SM:

Yes.

MR:

It gives them great pleasure and joy. In America, we eat food like it's medicine. Eat this because it'll do this for you. Eat this because it'll do this for you.

SM:

Yes.

MR:

Don't enjoy this because it's gonna do something bad to you. That drives me bananas.

SM:

Well, that's one of the things. So, let's talk about fat because the next one we're going to talk about one of my favorite books that you've written is The Book of Schmaltz. First of all, would you mind telling people who don't know and I'm sure most people know but what Schmaltz is.

MR:

Schmalz is rendered chicken fat. That's as easy and quickly as I can say. Technically, it's chicken fat rendered with some onions that also brown and flavor the fat.

SM:

Oh.

MR:

That's when you get really delicious, delicious fat and the skin crisps up because it releases all its fat. And so there's nothing but connective tissue, which is protein, which gets very crisp.

SM:

Oh.

MR:

And you've got the gribenes, is what they call the chopped chicken skin when it's crispy and browned. And it's just an extraordinary fat. And I think it was when you know people were complaining about you know. . . Their complaining about you know, that their mother's Jewish cooking is like it's, it's a heart attack on a plate. And, and it's just not. So, I wonder, right fat because we've kind of ignored this wonderful fat, the schmaltz. You know we know lard and we know olive oil. We know vegetable oil, but we've. . . And we know duck fat from duck confit, but we don't think about chicken fat. And it, oh my God, if you eat chop. . . I don't. . . I'm not a big fan of chopped liver, but when you make it with schmaltz, I cannot stop eating it. It is so delicious when made with, with, with, with schmaltz. And it's just a great thing. And again, I didn't know enough about it. So, I went to my neighbor Lois Baron who was an Ashkenazi Jew who had a great history and she said schmaltz runs through Jewish history, like a thread through an entire tapestry. So, I got a history lesson about Russian Jews and Ashkenazi Jews, how to make schmaltz, the proper way to make schmaltz. And I learned things like Jewish life in Cleveland and how she and her mother used to go to the butcher and pick out a live chicken to take home for to make chicken soup. And that often there were there were unhatched eggs in the chicken. And these were considered delicacies and you poached them in the soup. They're the eggs and I think they're called eyerlekh in, in Yiddish. So, there's a special name for them. They're considered a delicacy. They're also considered a delicacy in some Japanese cuisines and Thai cuisines.

SM:

But it's not the same as the Filipino dish that's just the egg and they boil it and it's just got the chicken inside it.

MR:

Oh no, that's different. I know what you're talking about. That's the fertilized growing chicken in there.

SM:

Yeah, and that's, I love that. My wife is Filipino and I love all Filipino food, but I particularly love that dish.

MR:

I've never had one with the actual bird in it. I'm jealous. I would love to. But yeah, I've heard about it. I've never seen it.

SM:

Anyway, back to the Jewish community, because I've had schmaltz made beautifully at Barney Greengrass in New York.

MR:

Mm-hmm.

SM:

I've had it. I've had the schmaltz made by, in fact, in LA, someone took the gribenes and used it as a, instead of bacon, used it as a skin inside a BLT, as it were.

MR:

Oh wow.

SM:

And that was that was just fantastic. So, I'd love to know just some more about how you use it.

MR:

I did sort of a traditional Jewish cuisine, 10 recipes traditional and 10 recipes that I sort of riffed on, on classics. So, I made a really beautiful three-star matzo ball soup by making a consommé with a little bit of garnish and a gorgeous single matzo ball in it. Really good. You know, again, there's only like 20 recipes in that book, but I did I made cookies with schmaltz.

SM:

Oh, interesting.

MR:

And it's a fat. So, when you know how fat works and you know how it does taste chickeny, it's a chicken fat.

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

But then you can use it to all kinds of different purposes, like making knishes. I always want to learn how to make an actual knish. So, Lois showed me how to roll it.

SM:

I've never, yeah, I've eaten them, but I've never tried making them.

MR:

Yeah, they're, they're fascinating to make. They're in the books, so have a look at that.

SM:

Yeah, and please, anyone who's listening to this, please go out and buy some of the books because if you go and find The Book of Schmaltz, it is incredible. And for those of you who really interested in food, which hopefully when you're listening to Food History podcast, I know you will go and find this really fantastic. All the books are, but I love the one on schmaltz. That's just a fantastic one.

SM:

So let's talk about two more things before we move on. Egg, I want to, like you get to an egg. How many recipes do you think there are with an egg? That's an interesting, I mean, it's huge, but.

MR:

It's it's how many grains of sand on a beach kind of question.

SM:

So how do you start writing that book?

MR:

Well, that's a great question. And it really began with Twenty because one of the items in Twenty, one of the things is the egg, understanding the egg and how to use it. It is, and I realized writing it then, was hard to get my head around it all just to write a single chapter about it. Finally, I did, but I kept thinking about it I thought, okay, how do we think about it? Let's think about this. You've got a whole egg. Now you can either, cook it in its shell or you can cook it out of its shell. If you cook it out of its shell, you can separate the yolk and the white and cook them separately. You can use them raw, you can use them cooked. And I realized there's so many things that. . . . You can use them to emulsify a sauce. There were so many different uses for them, I had to break it down into a flow chart. So, I did. And that's included in the back of the copy of, of the book. And that's what I used as my book proposal. I said, egg, and then down from there, whole or separated. And then from there, separated into whites and yolks or combined. And then each one had its own use. And I had a three foot long roll of parchment paper. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

. . . with all the different possibilities of using the egg in flowchart form. I did not write a word of a proposal. I just showed my editor at Little Brown this long. . . unscroll this whole piece of paper and just looking at it, you can see how fascinating it was. So, that's what I love about visual displays of quantitative information. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

. . . is that you could see at a glance that, oh my god, this is. . . . I haven't seen this before. We got to write about this. So, I was very proud of that proposal and proud of that book. I loved that book.

SM:

And how, again, when we talk about, when I talk about eggs, I talk about mine from visiting, you know, nearly 100 countries now. And I, each place I go to has a recipe using an egg.

MR:

Mm-hmm.

SM:

Every country I've been to.

MR:

No doubt. It is the most versatile ingredient worldwide in cooking.

SM:

And so did you go to other countries? Did you just stay in the US or the Western world? Or how did you take that view?

MR:

I took it again from a very from a technique standpoint. I wanted to explore all the techniques that, that you learn from learning all the uses of the egg. So, I did not look at eggs in culture. This is all about how whites work, how that what they're composed of, how yolks work, how they work when they're mixed blended together, what they can do, you know you how they can be used to raise a cake. The meringue is what gives you a beautiful angel food cake and gives lift to all other cakes. So, there's all kinds of mechanical things. There's chemical properties like the lecithin in egg yolks is what allows you to emulsify a butter sauce and things like that. I'm all about technique because when you know a technique, recipes are a dime a dozen. Techniques are finite. And if you know one, you know for every technique you know, you know 1,000 recipes. That's why I always focus on technique.

SM:

Fantastic. And for the last one, you could choose any one. You have How to Roast, How to Braise, How to Sauté. And if you choose one of those and give us, personally, I'd love to hear you talking about roasting. I'd love because roasting is very much a part of the British kind of techniques.

MR:

I love a Sunday roast. There’s just something, you know, there's just something about roasting that is more than just roasting because of the smells, the smells of roasting, a roasting chicken, a roasting leg of lamb, a roasting standing rib of beef. And it fills the kitchen, it fills the home with smells. And we know that smells are good smells, the smells of cooking relax us. There's a reason why as soon as you walk, it does, it affects, goes directly to your parasympathetic nervous system and tells you to relax. It's evolutionary, it means you're gonna be fed. There's a reason why when we walk into a home and we smell a standing rib roast, cooking in the oven or you smell a roasting chicken, you can't all but can't help yourself but say, it smells so good in here because you're saying, I suddenly feel so much better. We don't really quite recognize that. But I love the way cooking changes the mood of a house and the mood of a family and a mood of a gathering of friends. So that's one of the biggest parts of roasting that people don't even talk about. But it's one of the most valuable parts of it is the smells.

SM:

That to me is exactly how I think about it when I go back to England and I'll always have one of my favorite things on a Sunday. My brother and I will, or whoever, we'll make a roast dinner usually with beef or pork. We'll always have a Yorkshire pudding, which is a fantastic thing. And for me, that and the smell of fish and chips. Those are the things like, I'm going home. And you can make those in America, of course, you can. But there's something about that smell when I get off the plane, I go to my apartment there and I smell that and I always go, I'm home.

MR:

Mm-hmm

SM:

And that's exactly what you're talking about. I'm home.

MR:

And it's very specific smells because as you surely know, there's French fries in France taste different than the French fries in America.

SM:

Yeah.

MR:

I don't know why they just do. There are specific tastes and flavors because of the territory, the terroir that you are and too many intangibles to note. It's a very specific smell that you're thinking of. It's not just general, generic roast beef that you're smelling. You're smelling roast beef in England at home. And the air is different and the feeling is different. And so, I totally understand that. And it's not unusual that you couldn't get that anywhere, but you're home.

SM:

Yeah. And sometimes the smells that I have in America, I went to a steakhouse the other day, it's a nice steakhouse here. And I have a prime rib and it's covered in jus and all of that. And I just thought this to me is the taste of America.

MR:

Interesting.

SM:

And I love, I love prime rib, but you can't have that in the UK. They don't have that style of cooking and it's really fantastic.

MR:

Yeah.

SM:

What advice would you give to food writers starting out?

MR:

A lot of people come to me and say, Michael, I want to be a food writer. I want to write about food. How do I do it? And my answer is always the same. It is learn how to write first. Doesn't matter what you're writing about. You have to know how to write before you can write about a specific subject. And then I'd say, you have to know what the [bleep] you're talking about.

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

Because otherwise, what you write is not going to mean anything. I realized this. I was writing about a chef. I said, how do you roast a chicken, speaking of roast? And he said, I put it on a bed of mirepoix. And I roasted it open in a hot oven. And that's all there is to it. I said, what's mirepoix? Mirepoix is a standard thing you learn. One of the first things you learn in culinary school, a mixture of two parts onion and one part celery and carrot. But he looked at me with such disdain, such apparent disgust because here I was trying to write about food and I didn't even know what mirepoix is. So, one, I felt like an idiot. Two, he didn't trust me as a writer. So that's another thing you have to do is you have to gain people's trust. So, you have to know what you're talking about, gain people's trust, and you have to learn how to write. I learned how to write because I followed a couple of things. Sit down at the same time of day for the same amount of time and write, and write a specific amount of words, whether it's 350 or a thousand. Just do it every day. I did that for 10 years and I finally learned how to write. So, if you really want to write, I think anybody can write. I don't think it requires some special genius. It's a craft and anyone can do it if they're willing to sit down and work hard enough to do it. So, anybody can become a writer. You just have to want it badly enough. I knew there was nothing in this world I wanted to do more than write and I set my sights on it and that's how I became a writer. It took me 10 years, 20 if you start when I was fifth grade when I decided I was going to be a writer.

SM:

[Laughter]

MR:

It took me 20 years to learn how to write.

SM:

But will you do it very well? And that's a great way to end this part of the questions because what I do now is I like to have some what I call fun questions. So, they're kind of different. So let me ask you some of these.

If Michael was a meal, what would it be?

MR:

It, it would be. It would have to be pork belly with the skin on. Crispy skin with layers of protein and fat, succulent and full. That, that is, probably if you cut me open, I wouldn't look too much different from that.

SM:

There's a meal in the Philippines called Bagnet, which is slices of pork belly and it's roasted until everything is crispy and it is just fantastic. If you ever get a to try and it's got a little bit of spice, nothing too much. And that to me is one of the best tastes ever. And I love pork belly.

MR:

You're making me hungry.

SM:

Oh, okay. That's a great answer by the way.

If Michael had to go back in time to have any meal, where and what would that be?

MR:

Because, because I am such a Francophile in terms of food I love the French cooking French technique. That's where all this technique come, you know really began in the West. It's where it got formalized. I'd want to go back, I've been dying to and I've tried to in my mind just by reading about it. I would go back to the, the time of Carême.

I was going to go back to Carême and that era of French cuisine when it was just beginning and you had that gene, one of the first genius cooks who also wrote down his recipes and collected them. I'd like to see what it really was when you cooked with, they didn't have anything electric. They didn't have electric mixers. They didn't have gas stoves. They cooked over live flames. There's a great movie called The Taste of Things. I don't know if you've seen it, but it recreates. . .

SM:

Yes.

MR:

. . . 19th century cooking absolutely beautifully and how they did it using only stuff available in the 19th century. So, I go back to Carême to find the original French cooking.

SM:

That would be fantastic. Now, I don't know whether it's the story. I wrote about Carême in this episode in this years ago, maybe in the series five. But I wrote about Carême and what I found out whether it happened or not. But he, you know, the chefs always had the floppy hats then and he was the first person to have a tall hat because he was only about four, four foot nine and it was the way. . . .

MR:

I didn't know that.

SM:

Yeah, it was the only way that he could have the tall hat. And then when Escoffier came in, he had it marked with 32 ways he could cook an egg.

MR:

Right, that's the pleats in the hat, right.

SM:

Yeah, so but he wore the tall hat so everyone could see him in these big vast Parisian kitchens or wherever he was going to go. Which I just find fascinating. I don't know whether it's true, but it's a great story. Okay. Now if Michael had to go back in time to see the invention of everything, what would it be?

MR:

I'd love and I've tried to imagine in my mind what it must have been like. I would go back to Da Vinci. I'd go to Renaissance Italy and watch him trying to invent wings for a bird, watch him make these drawings. He was a great tinkerer and a great inventor of all kinds of things. So, I would apprentice to Da Vinci. I would learn old Italian and apprentice to Da Vinci to watch how he built things.

SM:

Oh, that would be fantastic. That's great.

First of all, Michael, your advice, your way of describing things is just fantastic. And it was like me having another conversation with you when we did it, you know, in Michael Symon's restaurant in Cleveland. We have, I love what you say. And it's fantastic.

So I would just want to say a huge thank you. I know everyone listening will love this. So thank you.

MR:

Thank you, Simon, for having me on. I’m very grateful to be here.

SM:

And finally, what are your social media sites so people can see where they can find out more about what you think, which is incredible.

MR:

My website has all my books on it has recommended kitchen tools. It's got Everything you know biographical details and stuff and that's ruhlman.com R U H L M A N dot com,  and please, please have a look at my substack which I really love writing and really care about and it helps give me a connection with readers, which I missed from the old blogging days I left used to love blogging before it went all SEO on everybody.

So, my substack is just ruhlman.substack.com. Please have a look and subscribe. It's free. There's a free version if you want. There's also a paid version, which I appreciate very much. But it's just fun. Join the community is what I'd say. Food is about togetherness. And that's one way I try to communicate with readers directly.

SM:

And I love that thought at the end. Food is togetherness.

OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

And, if you like what you hear, please don’t forget to join us on Patreon, subscribe, recommend us to your family and friends and give us a good rating on your favorite podcast provider.

Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

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We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and essential help with the research.