I can only be me!

Samin Nosrat

Categorized in : Me Only I Can

Things taste less salty when they're cool.

less things cool taste

The beach has always been a constant in my life.

my-life always life beach

I'm the child of immigrants, and there was always a garage filled with food, just in case, and you kept money under the mattress. You were always prepared, because you couldn't trust that you were being taken care of. So that translated into my life into a lot of opportunity hoarding.

trust money food life

My students regularly spend 20 hours or more in the kitchen with me. I try to teach them that even the most well-written recipe for, say, gazpacho can never take into account the ways in which a tomato that's lapped each morning and evening by coastal fog will taste completely different from one grown in a hot, inland valley.

me evening hot morning

We all have incredible relationships to what we eat, to what we don't eat, to what we've eaten since childhood and what we were fed, to what food means to us. And so I find it a really powerful tool in storytelling and in opening people's hearts and their minds.

childhood powerful food people

I love a Yorkshire pudding. It's basically pancake batter that's fried in beef fat and puffs up; it's like you can't go wrong.

fat go you love

There's a certain kind of dark-crusted sourdough bread I'm incapable of resisting. A sixth sense alerts me anytime I veer within a three-block radius of a bakery offering tangy country loaves with mahogany crusts. Without fail, I'll make my way inside and buy one, even if there's already half a loaf growing stale on my countertop.

me bread country way

Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance - of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you'll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.

you balance hot sweet

A burger is a black dress; a kebab is a Met Gala gown.

gown burger dress black

I've always believed that pastry chefs are born, not made. They're patient, methodical, tidy, and organized. It's why I stick to the savory side of the kitchen - I'm far too messy and impulsive to do all the measuring, timing, and rule-following that pastry demands.

messy kitchen born patient

By definition, comfort foods are rich and creamy or evocative of childhood pleasures.

definition rich childhood comfort

The cornerstone of every Persian meal is rice, or polo.

meal every polo rice

While other stone fruits grow tender on the surface as they ripen, apricots take an alternate path to maturity, softening from the inside out.

grow stone maturity path

I love mayonnaise. It's one of the first lessons I teach my cooking students. Turning eggs and oil into an emulsion - that creamy, satisfying third thing - feels like magic.

magic cooking students love

Very early in my culinary career, while helping another cook prepare the staff meal, I stirred some chopped raw garlic and herbs into a bowl of leftover lentils. The atonement for this sin was so extreme that I've never repeated it: After being chastised, I spent the next 20 minutes fishing out the minuscule pieces of garlic.

career never sin fishing

Grilling used to make me nervous, but then I learned to view the fire as just another source of heat, no different from a stove or an oven.

view me different fire

No one's born a good cook. You have to learn and practice.

good you born practice

I get an especially acute case of agita at the thought of a mortar and pestle.

acute case get thought

I've never tasted a store-bought tortilla that compares in texture or flavor with one made by hand, so I'm happy to invest some time. It's worth it just to see a friend take her first bite and understand, finally, that a flour tortilla is meant to be an essential component, not just a lackluster wrapper.

friend understand happy time

While a pot of boiling water may not offer the char or smoke of a grill, it does give the cook an advantage when it comes to seasoning food.

give smoke food water