What's Gaby Cooking: Eat What You Want | Gaby Dalkin

What’s Gaby Cooking: Eat What You Want

By Gaby Dalkin

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.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Hi guys, it's Gaby Dalkin from What's Gaby Cooking. And my new cookbook is called, Eat What You Want.

Suzy Chase:                   For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you liked this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now on with the quarantine question round, number one, where are you living?

Gaby Dalkin:                 Los Angeles.

Suzy Chase:                   What restaurant are you dreaming of going to after the quarantine?

Gaby Dalkin:                 My favorite is this like hole in the wall restaurant on the West side of town called Don Antonio's, where they have burritos, the size of an infant. And I cannot wait to go back.

Suzy Chase:                   What kind of a burrito are you going to get?

Gaby Dalkin:                 It's like a carne asada super burrito. So there's carne asada, lettuce, beans, cheese, guacamole, smothered in a wet sauce with more cheese on top.

Suzy Chase:                   Oh my God. That sounds amazing.

Gaby Dalkin:                 I haven't been thinking about that for the last 60 days at all.

Suzy Chase:                   No, no, no. At home what dish is getting you through this?

Gaby Dalkin:                 Oh, I have had a constant IV of hummus into my body the last two months.

Suzy Chase:                   So, now let's talk about your cookbook. On your YouTube channel called What's Gaby Cooking, in the description you wrote, "2019 was one for the books. Can't wait to see what 2020 has in store." Now at this point, how are you feeling about 2020?

Gaby Dalkin:                 So, I would like my money back. I think 2020 is going to be a wash in terms of doing anything as groups or going on a book tour or anything like that. We're all going to have a very new normal by the end of this year and that's okay. That's what we got to do. We got to stay together and do... Like everyone's got to be in this as a team, but I don't think 2020 is going to have a lot in store in terms of video content for making a really epic year end review video.

Suzy Chase:                   I hope you're wrong.

Gaby Dalkin:                 I know, I hope I'm wrong too.

Suzy Chase:                   So you were the pickiest eater until you were 18 and now your latest cookbook is called Eat What You Want, how did you go from then to now?

Gaby Dalkin:                 Yeah, so I didn't have seafood, I didn't have steak, I had very limited vegetables growing up. My mom's a picky eater, so I was also a picky eater. In college I was definitely still picky, but I learned to have steak because my friends were all ordering it at restaurants and stuff like that. So I tried a couple of new things, but it really wasn't until I got to culinary school in 2009, 2010, and my teacher... And I went to culinary school with no intention of actually staying in the food world. It was just a way of me to learn how to cook for myself and my boyfriend who's now my husband and my friends, like I just wanted to be a sufficient cook. And she, my teacher looked at me and she was like, "Gaby, if you don't learn how to like this, this and this, you're never going to make it in the food world." And I was like, "Oh, I accept your personal challenge and thank you." And then I really opened up my eyes to all the incredible food that's available to us and broadened my horizons.

Suzy Chase:                   Lately people have been asking you, what are you eating in real life? What does that even mean?

Gaby Dalkin:                 So I think a lot of people think the food I post on Instagram, it's beautiful, it's styled, it's photographed professionally. I think they think that's for show, but in actuality, it's exactly what I eat in real life. Granted, when I make pizza, it's not always that beautiful in my kitchen because I'm not actively trying to food style it before my husband and I demolish it.

Gaby Dalkin:                 But that's why I wanted to write this book, Eat What You Want, because I wanted people to understand that all the food that I'm putting up on my Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest, that's exactly what we eat. We're not hiding anything, I'm not doing anything else that you don't get to see, it's just real life. And it's all about eating a balanced diet and you're not depriving yourself of any kind of food.

Suzy Chase:                   Gaby's famous guacamole on page 257 is such an interesting recipe. Now, what do you love in your guac and what do you hate?

Gaby Dalkin:                 So my guacamole has lemon and lime juice and chives rather than cilantro. So I love that it's got both the lemon and lime, so like extra acid, it's super flavorful, and really cuts through the creaminess of the avocado. One of my dear friends hates cilantro. She has that gene where it tastes like soap. And so a long time ago, I made this switch to chives rather than cilantro. And honestly, I just think it's better. And other than that, I think it's a pretty traditional guac.

Gaby Dalkin:                 I don't believe in putting tomatoes in guacamole, because unless you find really incredibly flavorful tomatoes at the peak of the season, I think it's worthless. And anything else you can put in guacamole, I mean, I'm down for it, but like a regular guac that you can use on everything this is like my tried and true recipe.

Suzy Chase:                   You're the first person I've ever talked to who puts chives in their guac.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Yeah. I know because some people hate cilantro and we've got to make sure everybody's happy.

Suzy Chase:                   Yes. I'm going to totally try it this weekend.

Gaby Dalkin:                 It's really fresh. They have like a really nice... It's just something unexpected and very subtle, but delicious.

Suzy Chase:                   My avocados are too hard. I need to give them some time.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Yeah. Put them in a brown paper bag with an apple or a banana they'll ripen faster.

Suzy Chase:                   This cookbook and how you live is all about balance. On the weekends you like to recharge and let the week go with maybe some rose and a cheeseboard. You have upped the cheeseboard game on page 40 with a burrata platter that will blow people's minds. Can you describe this?

Gaby Dalkin:                 I love peas. Like, I don't think they get enough love all throughout the entire year. We just kind of beat them in the spring and then forget about them. But frozen peas, especially during quarantine are so incredible. They can really make or break a meal. We've been putting so many pea recipes on my website, but this recipe is basically smashed peas with some snap peas and the lemon pecorino dressing with a big giant ball of burrata on top and some prosciutto. And it is so delicious.

Gaby Dalkin:                 And you could say, like in the book, it's served with crostini, but you could also serve it next to some chicken or some steak and smash it all together for the most incredible bite of your life. My go-to appetizer, I make it for almost every party, I love it.

Suzy Chase:                   And it's so pretty too.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Thank you. Yeah. I mean, we eat with our eyes first, so I always am aware of what things look like. I think about that when I'm developing recipes for the book and the blog, I want it to be beautiful and I want it to be colorful and textured and all that kind of stuff. So that always plays into my recipe concepting.

Suzy Chase:                   Tell me about surprise vacation and how that got you into traveling.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Yeah. So my family we've been traveling. That's what we do. Like my parents always said, we're not going to spend money on fancy cars or this or that, but like, we do want to take you and travel so you can see the world and experience cultures and meet people you wouldn't normally meet and try new things.

Gaby Dalkin:                 So, it has always been really important to us. Surprise vacation started when I think I was eight and my sister was five. We both have summer birthdays and one of us would always cry at our birthday parties. So my mom was like, forget this, no more birthday parties. We're going to start taking you guys on a surprise vacation every year, and you'll get clues leading up to where we're going, that you can try and guess.

Gaby Dalkin:                 So it was fun for them because they got to not throw us birthday parties anymore and fun and educational for us because they would give us all these clues that we would have to think about and look up in encyclopedias, because that was before Google existed, all that kind of stuff.

Gaby Dalkin:                 So, that started 20 plus years ago. I don't even remember, math is very hard. So, we've been going strong. We've gone every year since I was eight. And now my husband comes and our surprise vacation just got canceled for 2020 because it was in July and apparently the property who we're going to aren't even opening this year. But it's one of the most special things my family and I do together every year. We love traveling and experiencing cultures and it's really fun to be able to do that with your parents.

Suzy Chase:                   I feel like your recipes are a reflection of your travels, is that right?

Gaby Dalkin:                 I'm so inspired by other cultures and what people are cooking and then bringing those ideas back and putting my California girl's spin on it. I think is a really cool way for me to let my audience experience those other cultures without having to get on a plane, which is so important now more than ever, because none of us are getting on planes. So it's really cool to be able to travel the world and pay respects to all the different cultures via our own kitchens.

Suzy Chase:                   Okay. When you're able to travel again, where do you think you're going to go first?

Gaby Dalkin:                 I want to go to Rwanda and Uganda and go see the mountain gorillas, been on my bucket list for years. And we did Safari in South Africa and Botswana a couple of years ago, and it was the most life changing trip of my life. And now I need to go do the same thing with the mountain gorillas.

Suzy Chase:                   Did you see Nature a couple of weeks ago? They had those gorillas on Nature that show on PBS.

Gaby Dalkin:                 No, I didn't, I missed it.

Suzy Chase:                   You have to see it.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Okay. I'll go back and see if I can find it on demand. The mountain gorillas are some of the most special creatures in the entire world. And if I have to track eight hours to go see one and just sit in its presence for two minutes, nothing would make me happier.

Suzy Chase:                   There's nothing I love more than a simple salad. And your little gem salad is just that. Four heads of little gem lettuce, two avocados, chives, there's the chives again, and lemon vinaigrette, that's it, perfectly simple.

Gaby Dalkin:                 It's one of those recipes that you could serve with any main course or carb or whatever it is, and it's going to work. There's nothing, there's no flavor profile it wouldn't work with.

Suzy Chase:                   It took me so long to get over being afraid of the kitchen. You've said your mission in life is to help people and their fear of recipes and cooking in the kitchen. What is your message for an intimidated home cook, especially now in the quarantine and we're all home cooks.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Yeah, I think it's really important to figure out where you want to start, like pick one really easy dish and master it. And then once you feel really comfortable with that, and you could do it without looking at a recipe or where you feel comfortable with the cooking techniques, then pick something else and it's slowly expand your repertoire that way. It's like a stepladder, like you're just taking little steps here and there and getting comfortable with your skills and different flavor profiles and expanding from there. I think that's really important.

Gaby Dalkin:                 I am incredibly comfortable in the kitchen now and perform well under pressure, but that's not where I started. And it was really scary to me. So in college, I only cooked chicken parmigiana, literally in pasta. That's all I made for my tennis team, for my husband's team, like all of that.

Gaby Dalkin:                 And I just got super comfortable with it. And after I knew I could nail a chicken parm, that's when I started branching out and doing other things. And I've since obviously grown from that, but I thought it was really important to have something that I'm like, this is my recipe, and I can totally do it for however many people are coming over. That gave me a lot of confidence back in the day.

Suzy Chase:                   The first family you ever cooked for as a private chef was obsessed with the Miso Cod at Nobu. This is going to be one of the first things I get when restaurants reopen here in New York city. Tell us about your version of this recipe.

Gaby Dalkin:                 So, the Miso Cod is incredible. And I remember the first time I ever made this, it was like the ugliest saddest looking fish I've ever seen in my entire life. It was just like limp and not crispy and black and on top, it was so sad. I have since changed how I cook it.

Gaby Dalkin:                 But the Miso Cod at Nobu takes three days to marinate and that's a lot of time, so this I have hit on the same flavors, but you don't have to let it sit in the refrigerator. You can for three days, but you just need to do it for three hours. And then it's really just about that delicious rice on there with some seasoned bok choy and getting that golden crispy crust on the fish is, I mean, it's a recipe for success.

Suzy Chase:                   Oh, that golden crispy crust. Oh my gosh.

Gaby Dalkin:                 It's so good. And then broiling it on top is like, you'll read that in the recipe for the people listening. But when you broil something on top, you get that high hit of heat that crisps everything up and looks like it's about to burn, but it's not going to burn. And cod is a very forgiving fish, so it's not going to overcook it either. I love that recipe so much.

Suzy Chase:                   Your dad has recently taken up bread baking. Has he been a bread baking machine during the quarantine?

Gaby Dalkin:                 My mother is like, "You need to stop going through all of her flour." Like, what are you doing? Yeah. Papa Dalkin is crushing the bread game. He's making regular bread, sourdough bread. He's making sourdough pancakes, he's baking cookies and muffins. He's a doctor. Like he goes into the hospital, he operates still, even during quarantine, but I think baking is his way of decompressing. My mother and my sister who lives right next to them, they're quarantined together. They have no shortage of baked goods right now.

Suzy Chase:                   I love it. So this week I made your Black Bean Soup on page 92 and the Double Chocolate Chip Muffins on page 18. Can you talk to us about these recipes?

Gaby Dalkin:                 So, let's start with the muffins because I think that's probably going to end up being the most popular recipe in the book, just based on what I've been seeing everyone post on Instagram. These muffins are inspired by, did you ever have the double chocolate muffins from Costco back in the day? Like they came as a 12 pack and they were the size... Oh my gosh.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Okay. So they're roughly the size of your face when you're a child and my mom, who is incredibly healthy, like basically an Olympic swimmer would let us, me and my sister, split one every morning for breakfast and it was so delicious. And we would savor every bite and the melted choc... Oh my God, it was so good. I've been trying for years to perfect the recipe.

Gaby Dalkin:                 So, finally we did, and I thought it was worthy of going in the cookbook. They're incredibly moist, they're stuffed with chocolate. They're great for breakfast or dessert or a snack, really good with coffee, I'm obsessed.

Gaby Dalkin:                 As far as the Black Bean Soup goes, my mom used to make a version of this when we were kids. And it's just a really simple Black Bean Soup with a mirepoix. It starts with onions, carrots and celery, garlic and then it has a little bit of spice from the cumin and chipotle, black beans, just canned, nothing crazy and some limes and it is so comforting. You can put avocado on top or cheese or sour cream, cilantro, chives, whatever you want. It's really a great pantry staple, comforting soup recipe.

Suzy Chase:                   So good and I made it for Cinco de Mayo. My husband and son were so happy. And last night we had baked potatoes and I put it on the top of the baked potatoes.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Ooh, I love that idea.

Suzy Chase:                   I'm cooking in quarantine here.

Gaby Dalkin:                 I love it.

Suzy Chase:                   My grocery store is out of chocolate chips. So this weekend I'm going to make Mat's Shortcut Mole Nachos. I cannot wait.

Gaby Dalkin:                 They are really good. I mean, making Mole traditionally in the past has been like a multiple day process. We went to a restaurant in Mexico City, they served us like 746 day mole and I'm like, that is aggressive. Nobody has that much time. And this version is equally as delicious and still packed with flavor, but doesn't take 762 days. So it's really good. That also, if you have leftover mole sauce would be great on a baked potato.

Suzy Chase:                   Now to my segment called my favorite cookbook. What is your all time favorite cookbook and why?

Gaby Dalkin:                 I'm obsessed with Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons cookbook, that is really incredible. And then there's another cookbook called Istanbul and beyond by Robyn Eckhardt, which is another fantastic book.

Suzy Chase:                   Yes. I had her on my podcast.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Yeah. I love her. I love her style of cooking and the photos in that book are beautiful. And I went to Turkey as a child, but I was a picky eater. So I didn't get to experience really any of the food because I just ordered French fries, every meal.

Gaby Dalkin:                 So cooking my way through Istanbul and Beyond, I feel like I'm making up for some lost time. And then Joshua McFadden's Six Seasons is basically a Bible for vegetables. It's pretty phenomenal.

Suzy Chase:                   Where can we find you on the web, social media and YouTube?

Gaby Dalkin:                 So my website, WhatsGabyCooking.com, and so is my YouTube. Instagram is What's Gaby Cookin, no G at the end, because it was back in the day when Instagram used to cut people off for having too long a username. Yeah. What's Gaby Cooking on all the things.

Suzy Chase:                   So you wrote in the book when it comes to maintaining balance in my life, a crucial part of that is letting go and letting loose. Thank you so much Gaby for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Gaby Dalkin:                 Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun.

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