All About Dinner | Molly Stevens
All About Dinner: Simple Meals, Expert Advice
By Molly Stevens
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.
Molly Stevens: Hi, I'm Molly Stevens and my newest cookbook is All About Dinner: Simple Meals, Expert Advice.
Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book, and now on with the show. You are a two-time James Beard award-winning cookbook author; and fun fact, All About Dinner popped up on NPRs list of their favorite books of 2019, plus many other Best of 2019 lists. And I don't know if you know, but I had Becky Krystal of the Washington Post on for my 2019 recap and we chatted about you there too.
Molly Stevens: Oh, I didn't know that.
Suzy Chase: Yes, you'll have to listen.
Molly Stevens: I will. Great, thanks.
Suzy Chase: You've spent your working life teaching others how to cook. I would have to say you're the originator of the idea that cooking is not about perfection. Talk a little bit about that.
Molly Stevens: I think this gets even harder and harder, Suzy, because in our Instagram, everything looks so good. There's so many wonderful images out there. And when we cook at home... I mean, this even happens to me, I've been doing something side by side where I cook a dish and I'll compare it to the one... Even in my own cookbook, I'm like, "It doesn't look the same," but it still tastes great. And sometimes I make mistakes and we all do. And I think when we set up perfection, what is it? Perfection is the enemy of good or something. But if our expectations are too, too high, I think you can get in the way of just the enjoyment of cooking and the enjoyment of the meal as well.
Suzy Chase: Gosh, I get it because I take a picture of everything I make out of each cookbook. And sometimes when I make it in my kitchen, it's dark and the lighting is awful and it looks just horrific. And I'm just like, "But it tasted so good."
Molly Stevens: Right or we didn't spend this time styling it. And it's not all just about the visual too. I think that one of the things, especially around the past couple of months with the holidays and everything, a lot of people call me or I get these messages saying, "I'm doing this and I don't have this ingredient, or this happened while I was working on this recipe." And more and more, I want to tell people it's going to be okay. It's usually going to be okay. I mean, if you burned the heck out of something, well, maybe it's not going to be okay or if you've over salted it. I mean there are a few things that it's really hard to come back from. But in general, we can use a workaround or a fix it. Just to relax a little bit and say it's going to be fine. It helps a long way for me, I think.
Suzy Chase: Well, on that note, how can we be present when we're in the kitchen?
Molly Stevens: I talk about this being like a domino effect. If we're already uptight and nervous and worried about the outcome and when we worry about the outcome, it's really hard to pay attention to the process because you've jumped ahead. And so if we can slow down and pay attention to the process.
Molly Stevens: I wrote this essay about picking up a lemon and squeezing the lemon and feeling how juicy it is, and then digging your thumbnail into the rind and letting yourself just smell that citrus aroma for a minute, and just take a minute and breathe that in. And for me, it's a reset almost where I was like, "Oh, it's me in the lemon right now." And then think about, well, maybe this lemon, I can turn it into something or add a little bit to whatever I'm making.
Molly Stevens: And it's just paying attention to what we're doing while we're cooking makes us better cooks. And it also helps us relax in the process of cooking because there's a certain enjoyment that comes from that. And the more we can pay attention and the more we can relax, the better cooks we become. And so that's why I call it sort of a domino effect is that the more we can be present and pay attention, the better we get at cooking.
Suzy Chase: God, those are some wonderful words of wisdom.
Molly Stevens: It's hard and I get it. I mean, our lives are busy and crazy and the kitchen is often the center of activity, so it's hard to clear a space both mentally and physically. But even just again, back to not being about perfection. It doesn't have to be completely quiet, it doesn't have to be completely clean. But if you find a little bit of mental space and a little bit of counter space, take a deep breath and start chopping onion.
Suzy Chase: Tell me about the photo of the handwritten recipes to the right of the dedication at the beginning of the cookbook.
Molly Stevens: Yeah, those are from... That's one of my favorite pages in the whole book, and those are a collection of pages out of a series of notebooks that I have, my grandmother's, my mother's, one of my aunts. And I love that because what I was trying to sort of message there is that I come from a long line of home cooks, and it's really where we as a family come together and where I learned my love of the table and the kitchen. I didn't grow up going out to restaurants. We had dinner at night together as a family and we celebrated the holidays around the table.
Molly Stevens: And I love that tradition of passing on recipes. I mean it's really, Suzy, it's what you're talking about here with the Cookery by the Book is that cookbooks are a way of doing that, whether they're family cookbook or cookbook we go to the store and buy.
Suzy Chase: Speaking of home cooks, I love that after all of your training and years of experience, you still think of yourself as a home cook. Not a chef, but a home cook.
Molly Stevens: Well, yeah. I mean for me, and I spent some time in professional kitchens and I spent a lot of time around chefs. To me the linguistics of it is a chef who's someone who's chief, who's in charge, and that means in charge of a staff or running a restaurant or in a professional capacity. And I don't do that right now. I cook at home and I write recipes for home cooks.
Molly Stevens: I mean there are a lot of wonderful chef cookbooks out there that are incredibly inspirational. But I also know that some of them can be frustrating for home cooks because we don't have teams of prep, cooks and dishwashers, and the recipes that have all these sub recipes because you have a whole prep kitchen cooking things for you. I am a home cook. I really am.
Suzy Chase: Talk about your reluctance to let people in when they ask you what you cook at home.
Molly Stevens: Before we were talking about the difference between a chef and a home cook, and for years I was a professional chef instructor teaching in a vocational situation. And so that's where my reluctance came was to talk about being a home cook to people who are aspiring chefs. But over the years, I've realized that really for me what we cook at home is such an expression of who we are and how we relate to the world, and also that's who my audience is for this book. And I've been writing for magazines for a number of years and a lot of that audience are home cooks. And I just realized that really that is what people are looking for is that the simple answer to the Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night supper.
Suzy Chase: You include steps and believe that knowing why we do something helps us remember how to do it. Talk a little bit about that.
Molly Stevens: Right. This goes back to being a cooking teacher. And so if you cook with someone who is a good cook, they may not be using recipes. In fact, they're probably not using recipes all the time, but they still have a roadmap in their head. They kind of know where they're going with something and they know the direction a dish is going to take.
Molly Stevens: And say I'm making a simple stew, if it's a protein-based stew, the first step is going to be to brown the meat. That takes a little bit of time to brown the meat. It a can be a little bit messy if splatters some, so I guess you could see it as a nuisance to have to brown the meat. But if you know that browning the meat is going to develop a deeper flavor in that stew, then you're more apt to really take time. Because as you're browning the meat, it goes back to paying attention, being present. You're browning the meat.
Molly Stevens: And for me, and I'm thinking about, "Ooh, the flavor of this stew is going to be a nice... It's a beef stew. It's cold out. I want a nice beef and carrots stew with maybe some red wine and broth in there. And so I'm browning the meat and I'm thinking about all the flavor that I'm developing that's going to balance out the sweetness of the carrots. And so knowing why I'm doing something, you're more apt to take the time to do it right or to just incorporate that into your understanding. So next time you're making something, maybe you don't need the recipe, you can just do it because it's habit
Suzy Chase: In All About Dinner, you list 15 habits of highly-effective cooks. Tell us about number eight, which says "Take advantage of fat's ability to carry flavor."
Molly Stevens: Right. Yeah. Cooks often like to say that fat is flavor and it is. I mean, there are a lot of really flavorful fats out there when we think about it, olive oil and duck fat and a lot of good, delicious butters more and more. But the other thing about fat is that a lot of flavorings and seasonings are fat soluble, meaning they're only really fully expressed when they are warmed up in a little bit or blended with a little bit of fat. If you try to make a dish without fat, say it's a pasta sauce or something and you're trying to cut way back on fat, if you don't have some amount of fat in there to help those flavors really express themselves and really come out, the dish will fall flat. Having a little bit of fat makes a big difference in getting full flavored.
Molly Stevens: Now if you are trying to cut back because that certainly carries a lot of... It's got more calories than proteins and carbohydrates. I understand why people want to cut back and don't want things too, too rich. It's a really good idea if you can to at least include a little bit of fat because it's going to go a long way bringing out the full flavoredness of all those great ingredients you're putting into food.
Suzy Chase: Is this why you included a pat of butter at the end of your recipe for pasta with chard and Italian sausage?
Molly Stevens: Exactly. It just adds a little bit, certainly richness obviously, and sweetness from the butter, the flavor. But that single pat of butter just helps bring all those flavors into concert so you'd get this full-flavoredness. There's a little bit of liquid in there, water from the pasta because it's not strained, it's just pour in the... I should say scooped into the pan. And so that little bit of butter just rounds everything out.
Molly Stevens: And the other thing that fat does is it helps the way it behaves in the mouth gives us a feeling of fullness and richness that you don't get without it. Even a little pat of butter and say, you're like, "Oh that pat of butter looks like too much," then use half a pat of butter. It's still going to make a difference.
Suzy Chase: On to number 13, you wrote, don't rush hot food to the table. Now that goes against everything I was taught.
Molly Stevens: I know, and I catch some flack for this one. I get it, Suzy, because certainly if you're in a restaurant setting, they call them runners for a reason because they take the hot food to the table. And I think this goes back to talking about perfection again, is that there's a certain amount of pressure that especially if you're making a couple of dishes at once and you feel like everything has to get on the table at once, it's a real juggling act. And so I don't mean to imply that you should let your food sit around before you eat it, but just to take a little bit of the pressure off.
Molly Stevens: And also with this insistence on hot food, I think we do miss out sometimes, especially if you're looking at roasts or even stews, but roasts in particular. If you roast something and carve into it right away, you can ruin it. I mean it needs to rest for a time before you take it to the table. A casserole, you want to let it settle a little bit.
Molly Stevens: It's more, I think of being a little provocative with this one in that I'm not saying let your food cool before you serve it, but to just relax a little bit. Think about a little more room temperature food. I love room temperature food. Plus hot food, if it's too hot, temperature hot, it actually is harder to taste all the elements of the... Just like spicy food can numb your taste buds, temperature hot food can also do that.
Suzy Chase: You've said you owe your cookbook career to Maria Guarnaschelli, your original editor. She's legendary. Can you tell us about her?
Molly Stevens: Maria Guarnaschelli, she's retired now. She retired actually part way through this book, through All About Dinner. We started it together and then she retired, but she... Incredibly brilliant, very demanding. The list of authors that she has shepherded onto the marketplace, I mean, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, Marcella Hazan, Julie Sahni, Rose Levy Beranbaum, the list goes on and on. The Food Lab, Kenji López-Alt, Fuchsia Dunlop, some of our greatest voices in cookbooks, maria was the editor to get their work onto the page and she was my first editor. I did the my All About Braising book with her, and I learned so much from her and I wouldn't be the writer that I am without her.
Suzy Chase: What was her special superpower?
Molly Stevens: She was brilliant. She was brilliant. I mean, she is still brilliant. Before she even got into cookbook, I think, she had a PhD is from Yale. She was incredibly demanding. She would stop everything to take it to the next level. You never knew when it was finished because there might be more work to be done. And so her special superpower was just her insistence on excellence. She didn't just do cookbook, she did a lot of other nonfiction. But she combined that the writing had to be good and the recipes had to be good. I should say more than good. She pushed, she pushed really hard.
Suzy Chase: Last week, I made your recipe for Pasta with Chard and Italian Sausage on page 93 that includes the pat of butter at the end of this recipe. Can you describe this dish?
Molly Stevens: Oh, that's one of my favorite dishes. This dish is skillet pasta. I'm so glad you chose this dish. Because what this book does a lot of is, it'll be a recipe and then following the recipe is a description on the basics of the dish and how you could riff and improvise and turn it into something else. It's basically your sauteing onions and vegetables in a skillet and then on the burner next to you, you're boiling a pot of pasta. And when the onions and vegetables are tender and flavorful and ready to be eaten, you scoop the pasta out of the pot. It's cooked by then. You scoop it out and put it into the onion and vegetables, and then you let it all heat together and then tossing and tossing and adding a little pat of butter. By the time it takes the water to boil to cook the pasta, you made a skillet pasta dish.
Molly Stevens: And it's one that's endlessly open to improvisation because you could just change out what those vegetables are. You could add a little bit of crumbled sausage. You could change the cheeses, all the different things that you could do to make a weeknight supper.
Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. What is your all time favorite cookbook and why?
Molly Stevens: Oh, this is the hardest question, and I think it does change. But the book that I've chosen is the Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rogers. I didn't realize this when I chose this book, but this is actually a book that Maria Guarnaschelli edited as well. And the reason is because it is just one of the most eloquent, intelligent, beautiful cookbooks. It talks about the art of tasting and seasoning, and it talks about shopping for ingredients. The recipes go from very, very basic to more sophisticated, but there's something in there for a cook at any level. It's an absolutely beautiful book cover to cover for every reason. And I just love how it's written and it's one, it's filled with more bookmarks than any other book of my entire library, I think.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Molly Stevens: So my handle on Instagram and Twitter is mstevenscooks and my website is mollystevenscooks.
Suzy Chase: Well, thanks, Molly, for taking us through a virtual cooking class today, and thanks for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Molly Stevens: Thanks so much, Suzy. It was really fun.
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