Lemon, Love & Olive Oil | Mina Stone
Lemon, Love & Olive Oil
By Mina Stone
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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.
Mina Stone: Hey, my name is Mina Stone, and I'm the author of Lemon, Love & Olive Oil.
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Suzy Chase: This is the follow-up to Cooking for Artists, where you tap into your Greek heritage. In this deeply personal cookbook, you celebrate the cultural Greek American legacy that has shaped your life and career. How is this cookbook also a journal?
Mina Stone: Both of the cookbooks I think of as a journal. So it's almost like part one, part two, and the third cookbook might be part three. Cooking for Artists, my first cookbook, it was really a cookbook that documented a certain period of my life, where I was cooking for artists really full-time, and that was my world. That was how I got started as a chef. And those recipes documented that period of time. As I moved into what I would describe as more of my own thing, which was opening the restaurant at PS1, so the second book, similar to the first, is really an exploration of a period of time and what I was going through and living.
Suzy Chase: That leads me to what your dad wrote in the introduction, which is the most heartfelt, incredible thing. How supportive is he?
Mina Stone: He's the best. He really is the best. And he is such an integral part of this cookbook. He's a psychologist, and he's also a translator of Greek poetry and a poet himself. He also has a degree in creative writing. I was lucky enough to have two editors for this book. One was Julie Will who's with Harper Wave. And the other one was my dad, who really read this book over and over again and worked on it with me from start to finish.
Suzy Chase: In that intro he wrote for you, everything is about relationships.
Mina Stone: I really like to think about the relationship I have with the people eating my food, whether I know them or not. And I like to sort of try and even spiritually tap into what I think people would like to eat. And I think that's what my dad was talking about.
Suzy Chase: Lemon, Love & Olive Oil. Tell me about the title.
Mina Stone: The title is basically the three ingredients I use the most. The original title was Lemon, Salt & Olive Oil because those three ingredients, you will find in almost everything I cook. I knew that's what I wanted to name the book right from the beginning. And then when me and Urs were talking about it, we were talking a lot about that other element to what makes food tastes good. And I think that it's something that is verbalized a lot by cooks, home cooks and chefs and grandmas, where you're infusing this other ingredient called love. That's what makes things taste better, no matter what you're cooking and no matter what your ingredients are like. And I find this to be really true.
Mina Stone: I wrote about it in my intro where my friend's mother, she came from Greece. She went to the Key Foods and she just got mediocre produce at best. She was cooking for her daughter, and it just tasted so delicious. I don't know how she did it. And it tasted so Greek. And I sat there and I thought about it forever because I've had this experience with my grandma and my mother and the people you feel like love you who are cooking food in a certain way, and it tastes elevated in a way you can't put your finger on. But when you think about it, I think that's what it is. And so we replaced salt with love. And there was also a running joke at the studio when I cooked there that when I made things really salty, it was because I was in love. Or if I under seasoned something, it was like, "Oh, Mina is not feeling great these days." So there's a whole backstory behind salt and love and those two things together.
Suzy Chase: For many consumers, the word feta is a generic term for white, crumbly cheese aged in brine. But feta actually originated in Greece. In your Georgian-Inspired Greek Salad with Herbs on page 57, feta adds such a nice, salty, speaking of salt, layer to the salad. Can you describe this recipe?
Mina Stone: Well, first of all, before I describe the recipe, I do think that if you make the transition to good feta, it will change your life. I spent three weeks in Moscow. And there is a large Georgian population in Russia, and so there's a lot of Georgian restaurants. And my mother's Greek side of the family, my grandma, my great grandma, originated from Georgia, from an area called Vatoum. I had a lot of curiosity about trying Georgian food, which I hadn't really ever done. And I remember a little Georgian cafe would serve this Greek salad, and it was basically a Greek salad with the salty cheese. The difference was that they showered this Greek salad with all these herbs. And it just had never crossed my mind that you could do this with a Greek salad, and having that variety in the Greek salad and that fragrant leafy addition, it's just so good.
Suzy Chase: You say a great salad holds your interest with different flavors and textures, and I think this salad is a great example of that.
Mina Stone: Yes. I love salad, and I find I always approach it the same way, which is ... even the Georgian salad could maybe be a little exception, but I think it has to be bright, tart, salty. And I like when there is something crunchy in there and maybe something soft or crispy, and I like the balance of sweet and sour and salty in a salad. I think the Georgian-inspired salad, the herbs kind of replace one element, but then you do have the salty and the olives, and the capers have this kind of textural thing. And then the tomatoes are soft, and the herbs are herbaceous. And so you have all these different elements going on in that salad.
Suzy Chase: In March 2020, the unthinkable happened. Your restaurant, Mina's at MoMA PS1, the Museum of Modern Art outpost in Queens, shut its doors during the pandemic lockdown. I'd love to hear about how that is going.
Mina Stone: Right now, it's actually going really well, thank God. It was a really hard time. I know how many people can relate. I think maybe every restaurateur learned about the strengths and weaknesses that is inherent to a restaurant. But at this moment, I think to have really worked with the museum on a solution to keep it alive was one of the most rewarding things. And in a weird silver lining, I would have never been able to get my cookbook down had the restaurant been open full-time.
Suzy Chase: Another recipe I made out of this cookbook was your Santorini Dogs on page 87 that you served at PS1 Warmup, which was the summer outdoor music series. Can you tell the story of these hotdogs?
Mina Stone: I love that you made them, first of all, because I put the recipe in the book because I was like, okay ... I err towards sort of healthy and fresh, and then the Santorini Dog to me is like, when you are craving sort of street food, but in your home, this is the recipe in the book for it. It is completely not my invention. It is my husband's invention, Alex. He is always the best at incorporating in making the most delicious street style food. And we were talking about it because what we really wanted to do was make a souvlaki or a gyro type of thing. And then Alex was like, "Why don't we try it with a hot dog?" And we did. So we got these amazing hot dogs and cooked them, made tzatziki, basically put all the toppings that you would put into a rolled gyro in Greece. And it's just its own thing.
Suzy Chase: Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the last ones, from the Greek word nostos, to return home, and algos, for pain. What does nostalgia mean to you?
Mina Stone: I think that I explored it a lot in the book because I think food is something that can make you really nostalgic, from the smells to what my mother made or my father made or my family, or memories you have of traveling or the country you grew up in or you've left behind. And I was always surrounded by that. I was surrounded by that experience. So in the US, I think I grew up with the experience of my mom longing for home, and food was a part of that. And then when we would go to Greece, it was being able to live at present time. And I almost knew that when we went back to the states, this was the thing that we would miss the most. So I think that food is the carrier oil for nostalgia.
Mina Stone: Recently, something I was thinking a lot about and something that an artist I interviewed told me, an Iraqi artist. It was almost interesting to hear him talk about how nostalgia didn't really serve him, that what nostalgia is is a longing for something that doesn't really exist anymore. And that really stayed with me because that was putting into words something that's true. It doesn't exist anymore, and that's why you have the nostalgia for it. So being aware of that and the fact that you can recreate it in present time, your idea of nostalgia, and maybe approach it differently, is something I've thought a lot about because nostalgia can be something really beautiful and it can also be something, I guess, that can make you kind of stuck.
Suzy Chase: In the book, you have a section called Grocery Shopping where you talk about the bodega. I adore my bodega here in the West Village. It's called Andy's. And they make the best bacon, egg, and cheese. I have a relationship with the guys. I love them. I was worried about them during the lockdown. And I'd love to hear about your bodega.
Mina Stone: My bodega is up the street. It's called Green Farm. And I go in there with my son. I go there in there with my stepdaughter that I wrote about, and she would always go in there by herself. And at some point, I was like, God, I feel really exposed. My local bodega sees me at every different moment of my life with my family. Sometimes we're happy, sometimes maybe we're fighting. They're really close. They've seen my kids grow up. It's crazy. It's almost like your psychologist in a way. You have all these different forms of therapy in your life, and I think the bodega is one of them. You don't necessarily dive into your life outside of that little area, but you have something more with that person because I go there all the time, because my stepdaughter goes there all the time to get lunch. Or I go there all the time because in New York City, it's true. Sometimes grocery shopping is not a precious experience. Sometimes it's like, I need the head of cabbage wrapped in plastic from my bodega. I need to go get it. And that's a whole other relationship. It's basically what makes New York City beautiful is that there's all these different experiences in the city packed into one.
Suzy Chase: I also made a third recipe out of the cookbook, which is the national dish of Greece called Fasolada. Is that how you pronounce it?
Mina Stone: Fasolada, yeah.
Suzy Chase: Okay. Close.
Mina Stone: Yeah. What I like to do, I like to pronounce it the Greek way, the proper way. And then I like to pronounce it how you should pronounce it in America with no .... So I guess you could say Faso-la-da. Fasolada.
Suzy Chase: Yeah. That's what I thought. And then how's the traditional Greek way?
Mina Stone: Fasolada.
Suzy Chase: That's the traditional Greek white bean stew. Can you describe this dish?
Mina Stone: It is a really good example of very simple cooking. It's also very healthy and delicious. It is a stew of white beans, and you put carrots and celery. And you can put canned tomatoes in there, but more often than not, I just make it, you put whole tomatoes in it until they cook down and you have a really light tomato broth, a thick tomato broth with the white beans and the carrots and the celery. And you can top it with a bunch of parsley and olive oil and have a slab of feta and some olives on the side, and it's perfect.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Dream Dinner Party, where I ask you who you most want to invite to your dream dinner party and why. And for this segment, it can only be one person.
Mina Stone: I always tell Alex that if there was one person in this world I would leave him for, it's Matt Damon. And I would choose to have dinner with Matt Damon because I would get him all to myself, and it would kind of be like a date. And I love the guy. He's my only celebrity crush.
Suzy Chase: What would you make him?
Mina Stone: I don't know.
Suzy Chase: Santorini dogs?
Mina Stone: Yeah. A full Greek meal. No, I would try and class it up. Not street food. Something more like very beautiful and how about the Georgian Greek salad? How about that? And the lemon olive oil cake and ... Yeah, really give him a tour of Greece.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Mina Stone: My Instagram is Mina Stone. Very easy. The restaurant is @minas.nyc on Instagram. You can go to my website, minastone.com. I think that's it.
Suzy Chase: To purchase Lemon, Love & Olive Oil and support the podcast, head on over to cookerybythebook.com. And thanks, Mina, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Mina Stone: Thank you, Suzy. Thanks a lot.
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