I Dream of Dinner | Ali Slagle
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.
Ali Slagle: I'm Ali Slagle. My cookbook is called I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To)
Suzy Chase: This is a total thrill for me to have you on the cookbook show. You have been such an inspiration for me. So I remember when you used to do this cookbook mail, Facebook Live thing when you worked at Food52. I would say this was what, seven years ago?
Ali Slagle: Yeah, it was a long time ago. I don't even remember when.
Suzy Chase: A long time ago. And you would open the cookbooks that had come in the mail. I think you called it cookbook mail, so you were unboxing before unboxing was a thing, and I marveled at how you were so knowledgeable about each and every single cookbook. Lots of times, you hadn't even pulled the cookbook out of the bubble wrap or envelope and you'd go into who the author was, the background of the cookbook, the nuances, recipes, fun facts. So my passion for cookbooks began when I did cookbook publicity in the early '90s. When did your passion for cookbooks begin?
Ali Slagle: Sure. Well, first of all, sometimes, I don't really realize that people actually watch that Facebook Live, but it was funny because cookbook publicists would watch it just to see if we got the book or not so that was a funny twist for that whole series. I got really into cookbooks as a kid. My mom had a ton of cookbooks. I feel like I read cookbooks instead of novels, and then when I was in college, I interned at Ten Speed Press and I think during that time, I realized just how difficult it is to make a book, just how much hard work goes into it from so many people. So when I'm looking at someone else's book, I really try and be thoughtful about it because I know how much went into it.
Suzy Chase: But it was more than that. You knew that cookbook inside and out, oftentimes even before it got halfway out of the envelope.
Ali Slagle: I think it's like some people watch sports, I pay attention to cookbooks. That's my jam.
Suzy Chase: I love this quote so much. "Some count sheep. I dream up dinner." So when you go for walks or space out on the train, you're playing dinner Tetris in your head, can you walk me through an example of dinner Tetris?
Ali Slagle: Yeah. It's a really chaotic and fluid process so I'm not sure it will make much sense explaining it. So a recipe I'm working on right now, I wanted to make an asparagus pasta but I didn't want to do cooked asparagus because I feel like that's been done a lot so I thought I could salt them and leave them raw. And then I thought if you do raw things, you need some cooked things so that it tastes hearty and filling, so I thought I could do some brown butter, maybe with some capers, but butter is so expensive right now and ingredients in general are so expensive so I thought, how else could I do something nutty without butter? And then I thought about a whole grain noodle or a soba.
Ali Slagle: And then I thought about, I didn't want to give up the capers so I thought, how could I cook the capers? And I had recently tested a recipe for Food52 from Rebecca Firkser that used the oil from a sardine can and I thought, well, I could probably crisp the capers in the sardine oil and then there would be protein from the sardines. It's that, over and over again, all day long.
Suzy Chase: See, this is why I really think you're the epitome of a recipe developer, just hearing that.
Ali Slagle: It's kind of like a language. This is just how I think and what I think about.
Suzy Chase: Every single recipe you put your stamp on, I could read through it and say, "Oh, that's Ali's recipe. Can you talk about the structure of the recipes?"
Ali Slagle: Sure. So all of the recipes use maximum 10 ingredients, usually closer to five to eight, and no more than 45 minutes. And my goal was that the recipes really ask very little of you so that you are freed up to live your life, or if you're only operating at 50% capacity, you can still make dinner. And I think the other goal of having the recipes be very minimal and streamlined is that if you see an opportunity where you can add your own spin to it, you want to substitute something or embellish, you're not exhausted by the recipe so that you can still ad lib as you want.
Suzy Chase: I also notice that you list the items but not the measurements, and you include the measurements in the preparation steps. I'm curious how you came up with that format.
Ali Slagle: Yeah. So the inspiration was from Nigel Slater's book, Eat, and I think he's done the same format in other books of his. But basically, the way I was thinking about it was the ingredient list becomes the shopping list so you can scan the list and see if you have all of those items or if you need to go buy something. And then once you start the recipe, you're in the recipe so you can measure as you go and you don't have to look back and forth to the ingredient list, it's all a seamless process.
Suzy Chase: Okay. We need to talk about your nonna's Biscotti recipe. But I had no idea it was going to be the actual image of the three hole punch lined paper with the notes and all the things marked in different pen colors. It is truly a work of art. Can you talk about this recipe?
Ali Slagle: Well, first of all, she doesn't know I took this recipe and she doesn't know it's in the book, so-
Suzy Chase: She doesn't?
Ali Slagle: No, she doesn't. We'll see. Sometimes I'm like, is she going to be mad at me? But I don't know, it's too late. So she is an amazing cook and she always tries to write down her recipes, just for the future, and this recipe is probably her most famous. But as you can tell, she is always going back over the recipe and making changes and swapping things and making notes, and I thought it was a great visual just to express this idea that a recipe isn't permanent and that you can make your own changes to it. I think what was important to me was that if you really need to cling to a recipe and you're afraid to do your own thing, the recipes in the book will be there for you and you can hold on really tight. But also, I don't think you should be beholden to what I put down on paper. It should really become your own.
Suzy Chase: As you said, it really reminds us to cook outside the lines.
Ali Slagle: Yeah. I don't think even she could follow this recipe anymore because it's just so marked up, but she knows it by heart.
Suzy Chase: It's crazy. I hope you have it framed.
Ali Slagle: I know. I do have it. I have it in a little file thing, but yeah, I'm holding onto that for my whole life.
Suzy Chase: So tell me about your idea of mush.
Ali Slagle: So my friend, Caroline, her family calls this kind of family of dishes little mothers, but it's basically things that console you and are very soft. So things like congee or arroz caldo, oatmeal, risotto, cream of wheat, things that are warm and comforting and like a little mother. I should say, the book is organized by main ingredient and then technique, so how I turn that main ingredient into a dinner. And the point of that is just so that you can see the blueprint of the recipes and see why it turned a grain into dinner, so that you can use that technique on your own. But they're not technical techniques so one of the sections is called Make Mush.
Suzy Chase: You say if pastas competed in an obstacle course, olive oil sauce pastas would win. I love a good olive oil sauce. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Ali Slagle: Olive oil already is kind of a sauce, it's already very flavorful, and unlike butter, it's good warm or at room temp so it can do so many things. But when it's warm, it also carries flavor, so you can put one thing in it and it can become a sauce. So this weekend, we had friends stop by unplanned with their two year old and at seven o'clock, I was like, "Okay, I'm making dinner. You all aren't leaving and I'm happy you're not leaving but I have to make dinner." I just simmered some garlic in olive oil and used that to sauce pasta, and everyone was like, "This is so good. What did you do?" And I was like, "This is embarrassing," but it's just olive oil can do so much for us.
Suzy Chase: That's so true. Olive oil does all the heavy lifting.
Ali Slagle: It really does. Yeah.
Suzy Chase: So I very, very rarely say this on The Cookbook Show but I want to make every single recipe out of this cookbook, and I've already made a few and I have a long list going for this week. So first, I started with turmeric, dill, rice, and chickpeas on page 193. So full disclosure, my oven is broken. I live here in the West Village in New York City so who knows when my landlord is going to either fix it or get me a new oven, so thank goodness for your cookbook. So I'm only using the stove top so this was a glorious, fast, delicious recipe. Can you describe it?
Ali Slagle: Sure. So this comes from the grains chapter in the Simmer Like Pasta section. So this section is all about grains that you boil in a big pot of water, like pasta. And the benefit of that is that all the grains are really separate. They won't stick together so they're really good for salads, but they also, you can dry them really easily so I wanted to show crisping grains using this boiled water technique. So I thought about tahdig and then I love the combination of turmeric and dill. It's very earthy but also bright, so I was thinking about kuku sabzi, which is where there's just a ton of herbs with turmeric or other spices baked in eggs. So that was the flavor direction but it needed protein, and for all the vegetarian recipes, I really did try and incorporate protein where it made sense.
Ali Slagle: So the recipe has you boil a can of chickpeas with the rice, and the result of that is that the chickpeas get really soft and tender but they won't fall apart, like if you made them from scratch. So you boil rice with chickpeas, you drain it, just shake it dry, and then as that's happening, you're sauteing some onion in olive oil with some spices. And then you just put the rice and chickpeas in the pan and as that happens, the rice gets crisp on the bottom but the chickpeas also get crisp so it's like this great texture situation, and then there's a simple tahini sauce just for some creaminess for each bite.
Suzy Chase: I thought it was such a different technique to throw the chickpeas in with the rice, to boil them together. I looked at it about three times. I was like, does she really mean this? Is this right?
Ali Slagle: I do. I learned it from Anata Rossi. She wrote pretty often for Food52 and she had mentioned that you can boil canned chickpeas for up to half an hour, just to get off any tinny flavor and soften them, and I just thought it was so smart.
Suzy Chase: Yesterday, I made your Shortcut Chicken Chili, AKA mom's world famous recipe on page 286, and you and your mom spent a year and a half remaking this recipe to try to get all the measurements right for the cookbook. Talk a little bit about this recipe.
Ali Slagle: Sure. So similar to my grandma, my mom is a prolific cook but doesn't write anything down, so my version of this recipe from her is in an email and it's brown onions, add cumin, and it's like, I know what you mean but it will be hard for someone else to replicate that. So I, on my own, used her back of the napkin recipe to come up with this recipe and then she would make it and she was like, "Not quite right." And so we kept going back and forth, figuring out the measurements.
Ali Slagle: It was really a fun process and I'm really happy where we ended up. I've eaten this chili more than probably anything in my life. My mom always has it in the freezer. She can make it in 15 minutes. She actually simmers it for about five minutes and I think I extended it in the recipe, but it's a shortcut chili because it's not real deal chili. You use a jar of salsa, there's ketchup, which adds some sweetness, and there's a can of beans and then a lot of cilantro. It's a fast chili and more delicious than I feel like you might expect.
Suzy Chase: Tonight, I'm going to put it over some nachos.
Ali Slagle: Ooh, that's a great idea. I really like it with scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Suzy Chase: Oh, that's good too. Yeah, I have a lot left over. I think I'll do that tomorrow morning.
Ali Slagle: That's a great idea.
Suzy Chase: So one thing I've learned from you over the years is to be very generous with the cumin.
Ali Slagle: It's amazing that you say that because I am not aware of that in my own cooking, so I think my cooking more than I do.
Suzy Chase: You're not aware of that? That's so funny.
Ali Slagle: No.
Suzy Chase: I feel like any recipe of yours where there's black beans, it's like, here comes the cumin.
Ali Slagle: My gosh. I have to break that habit maybe.
Suzy Chase: No, I love it. It's so good.
Ali Slagle: I think my mom does that too. Cumin just adds this warm ground level. When you're making a soup, it can often feel like change jingling around in your pocket and you have to build a ground layer, and I think a lot of people make sofrito, which is very time intensive and delicious. But to me, cumin does a similar thing. It builds a cradle for all the ingredients to hang out together in.
Suzy Chase: Another thing I noticed in this cookbook was you have subtitles for each and every recipe. So for example, Coconut Green Curry Cabbage, and the little subtitle. I don't even know what it's called, I called it a subtitle.
Ali Slagle: Yeah, that works.
Suzy Chase: But you wrote the singe of a roast plus the melt of a braze, and then with your Whole Grains, Chorizo and Dates recipe, under it, you wrote a good for you grail salad that doesn't side eye sausage. And this is a good one, Cheesy Bread Pot Pie, a red sauce spectacle. Now, to come up with these subtitles seems like so much extra work. Can you talk about including them in the cookbook?
Ali Slagle: Well, the book doesn't have head notes and I think head notes are very important, but I was laser focused on the goal of making dinner ASAP. So when your kid is running around and everyone is hungry, do you really have the mental energy to read a head note? And I would say you can still make a recipe, oftentimes without reading a head note so for this book, it felt like a head note wasn't necessarily essential to the recipes but I did at the same time want to kind of illustrate what the general mood of the recipe was so these subtitles do that for each recipe.
Suzy Chase: What are slouching vegetables?
Ali Slagle: So, slouching vegetables are basically when you cook them for a very long time, all of their water comes out and as a result, they are no longer stiff, they're no longer filled with water. They are really sweet and their true, most concentrated flavor.
Suzy Chase: So at the end of the cookbook, you thank the Fort Greene Community Fridge. I love that. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Ali Slagle: I cook a lot of food, more than I can eat and I feel like I have a constant anxiety about what to do with all the food, just because I really don't want to waste it. And a lot of shelters and food banks, they won't take food from someone's house, just because it's not food safety certified which I totally understand. But during the pandemic, all of these community fridges popped up around Brooklyn and they're basically a fridge outside on the sidewalk with some pantry shelves as well, and people can come and put food in the fridges. There are some restrictions about making sure things are labeled or some places will only take fresh produce, et cetera, and then anyone can come by and take the food. It made me feel so much better making sure that all the food was going somewhere, so while I was testing and also during the photo shoot, all of the food would go to the Fort Greene Community Fridge, and I really am so thankful for that resource.
Suzy Chase: So it's been six months since you gave up your Brooklyn apartment, squeezed your life into a slow but mighty van and headed west. I am obsessed with your old Japanese van. I'd love to hear about that and the journey you've been on with your boyfriend.
Ali Slagle: We started in New York and we went to the West Coast and worked our way down the West Coast for six months. And there were a lot of reasons why we did this but I needed a new environment, just to get inspired and get some new ideas, and I just wanted to see what cooking was like in other parts of the country. I'd never lived in a town with only one grocery store so I just wanted to see what it was like, how limiting that was and stuff like that. So it was a great adventure and the van also has a little micro kitchen in the back so we would cook really simple meals from the van and it was great, and I hope we get to go back out really soon.
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 the segment, it can only be one person.
Ali Slagle: The first person who I thought of, which is funny because I probably could have dinner with her, is Sohla El-Waylly. I often think of her as a video personality, but she is such an incredible chef and recipe developer. I've been testing her new cookbook and I just have learned so much and I'm just constantly in awe at how well she can write recipes and express ideas, and I'm just really moved by it so it would be great to finally meet her.
Suzy Chase: I can't believe you've never met her.
Ali Slagle: No. We've met very briefly in the lobby of a building. I was passing off something to her to give to someone else, but no, I've never really met her.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Ali Slagle: My website is my name, alislagle.com and on Instagram, it's @itsalislagle.
Suzy Chase: To purchase I Dream of Dinner, head over to CookerybytheBook.com and thanks, Ali, for coming on Cookery By The Book Podcast.
Ali Slagle: Thank you so much, Suzy.
Outro: Follow Cookery By The Book on Instagram, and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery By The Book.
