On Not Wanting To Cook, Our One-Minute Cooking Tip, An Interview With Stacey Mei Yan Fong, Hunan Preserved Mushrooms, Pickled Sichuan Chilis & More!
Pies from all over the United States! Plus, ways to get over your reluctance to cook. And a one-minute cooking tip.
We've got it all. We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, authors of over three cookbooks including THE LOOK AND COOK AIR FRYER BIBLE (which you can find here).
We've got a packed show this week. Tips on getting over your not-cooking vibe. A one-minute cooking tip about salt. An interview with Stacey Mei Yan Fong about her book 50 PIES 50 STATES. And we tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Thanks for spending time with us. Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[00:57] How to get over your reluctance to cook.
[14:50] Our one-minute cooking tip: Use a salt cellar in the kitchen, rather than a salt shaker.
[16:35] Bruce interviews Stacey Mei Yan Fong, the author of 50 PIES 50 STATES.
[31:58] What's making us happy in food this week? Hunan preserved mushrooms and fermented Sichuan chilis.
Transcript
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Scarborough.
Speaker:And together with Bruce, we have written over three dozen cookbooks with more in the making, including the Absolute smash, best
Speaker:We love Costco, we love bj.
Speaker:We love the big box stores, and those books have sold amazing at.
Speaker:Those big box stores, which we are thrilled about.
Speaker:We're gonna talk a little bit about pressure cooking.
Speaker:In this episode of podcast, we're gonna talk about how to get over some cooking obstacles.
Speaker:We have a one minute cooking tip, as is traditional.
Speaker:Bruce has an interview with Stacey Mayan Fong.
Speaker:She is the author of 50 Pies, 50 States, a book that's actually getting tons of play right now.
Speaker:And of course, as always, we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:So let's get started.
Speaker:There are a lot of reasons people don't cook Right.
Speaker:A lot.
Speaker:And the biggest problem from not cooking is you eat more fast food.
Speaker:You eat less than healthy meals.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And it, it is just not good for your wallet.
Speaker:It's not good for your body.
Speaker:Do you know that the fast food intake of the average person.
Speaker:Is really high.
Speaker:Pre age 25, you probably already could figure that one out, but it's really high, pre age 25, and then it actually
Speaker:It starts to fall and then it starts to pick up dramatic speed for people over 70.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:that makes sense.
Speaker:I mean, look at your mom and your dad before your dad died.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And your parents were in their early eighties, and your mom really.
Speaker:It didn't feel like cooking anymore.
Speaker:She quit cooking.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so what were they gonna do?
Speaker:They went out and got, got fried chicken from the drive through window and, and they got Taco Bell, lot of
Speaker:Taco Bell, lot of Wendy's, a lot of taco.
Speaker:Be your mom loves Taco Bell and loves Wendy's Bacon cheeseburger.
Speaker:Something I don't even know.
Speaker:And hey, she's 90 years old.
Speaker:So clearly it's not doing her any bad stuff.
Speaker:She's
Speaker:going on 91.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:But anyway, yes, that is the way that fast food works out.
Speaker:But you know, a lot of people end up ordering in, in big cities using the services like DoorDash or Uber Eats mm-hmm.
Speaker:To order in, um, a lot.
Speaker:There's a lot of that that goes on because people don't have time to cook.
Speaker:And let me tell you that I am completely sympathetic to this.
Speaker:If you don't know, I am the writer in our team and Bruce is the chef and I do not fix dinner.
Speaker:Almost ever in our household.
Speaker:And if it were left to me to fix us dinner, we'd be eating a lot of cheese and crackers, which
Speaker:is a bad thing a lot.
Speaker:But I do like to make dinner and there are lots of times that I wish I could even go get something to eat.
Speaker:And we live very rurally and there's really nothing except pizza.
Speaker:So we don't.
Speaker:Eat much from fast food.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:And I should just add that we live in such a rural spot at New England.
Speaker:Sorry, this is just really sa but so rurally in New England that to get pizza means we drive to the pizza place.
Speaker:No pizza place will deliver to us.
Speaker:That's how rural we are.
Speaker:I will say however, that the fried chicken at the big Y supermarket is really, oh God good.
Speaker:And I.
Speaker:Throw it in the air fryer and it gets ri, but then I'm still cooking.
Speaker:So even though I buy the fried chicken at the supermarket, I'm still cooking.
Speaker:So here's, here's some of the problems is lack of time.
Speaker:And one of the solutions is one that has come on big time in the last decade, and that is prepped vegetables.
Speaker:And as you know, most supermarkets now from Whole Foods down to your local supermarket, all stock completely.
Speaker:Prepped.
Speaker:Vegetables cut onions, cut celery cut, uh, carrots.
Speaker:Now let me tell you something.
Speaker:What there is about, this is a lot of food waste.
Speaker:And I don't mean on the supermarket end, I mean on the consumer end.
Speaker:People get these things home, these containers of chopped celery, and they can't use it all before it goes waggly.
Speaker:So, Buy yourself some freezer bags and freeze the remaining.
Speaker:Oh, that's a really good idea.
Speaker:And it started out with mostly what you would find are like the spiralized vegetables and you can still find them.
Speaker:And they're wonderful.
Speaker:You get, you get the butternut squash and the beets and the carrots.
Speaker:That's what you had for my birthday.
Speaker:My birthday was back last month in June, and oh, I asked for, Uh, for us to split a porterhouse, which we did, we love splitting a
Speaker:And so we split a porter.
Speaker:Jacks breath.
Speaker:Jacks breath.
Speaker:And it's true.
Speaker:And, um, I asked for spiralized butternut squash in a chili crisp, crisp vinegarette to go with it.
Speaker:And you had it?
Speaker:I did and it was delicious.
Speaker:And the spiralized stuff was what was out there.
Speaker:You could still get it, but I remember when we lived in New York and this was, you could just
Speaker:Italy the giant.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:You know, the Italian food warehouse with restaurants and Right.
Speaker:Stores, everything in it.
Speaker:In New York, they actually had a vegetable concierge and you could go buy vegetables at any of the vendors they did and drop it off
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:This is not giving average listeners guides to how to pre how to, to, well, if you don't deal with vegetables,
Speaker:no, because if you don't have time, you don't have time to go to eat Italy.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:And also it's a little bit expensive.
Speaker:So let me say this.
Speaker:If you don't know pressure cookers do cook things much more quickly.
Speaker:And one of the things we've learned, cuz we have now written what Five pressure cooker books all through the Instant Pot.
Speaker:It kind of crazy.
Speaker:But one of the things that we learned is the promise of the Instant Pot is that you put everything in it, you put the
Speaker:And what people we've discovered, readers resist.
Speaker:Is doing other things like taking the lid off and then taking the meat out and then crisping
Speaker:This is what people don't wanna do.
Speaker:They wanna take the lid off and see their dinner.
Speaker:Well, part of it is you don't have the time.
Speaker:You don't wanna take the time.
Speaker:But the nice thing about cooking in the pressure cooker or the instant pot, is you don't always have to do that.
Speaker:You can make risotto a delicious, creamy, cheesy, butternut squash, mushroom, you name it, risotto, seven minutes, no stirring.
Speaker:Nothing to do after you take the lid off.
Speaker:And let me make a shameless plug here on the podcast for our book, the Kitchen Shortcut Bible, because we
Speaker:And what I mean by that is you take all the ingredients for a slow cooker, braiser or stew,
Speaker:You shove that bag sealed up in the freezer.
Speaker:Then when you're ready, you simply, you don't defrost it, you pour it frozen, you chip it out of that
Speaker:You get it in the slow cooker, you put the lid on, and eight hours later, at the end of the day, it's dinner.
Speaker:So you can kind of prep this on the weekends.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And make big bags of braises and stews.
Speaker:That way you don't have to worry about having time in the morning before you leave the house to go to work
Speaker:One of the other big problems that people have with cooking is they don't do it cuz they hate the mess.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Now I do.
Speaker:I hate the mess.
Speaker:You know what?
Speaker:I made smash burgers for dinner last night.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Talk about a mess.
Speaker:And they got bought super fatty ground beef from a Whole Foods and it was a mess.
Speaker:It splattered everywhere there was grease.
Speaker:Splatters on the back, splash on the refrigerator, smell like a cheap diner.
Speaker:The house still smells like a cheap diner and yeah, it was a mess.
Speaker:So I understand you don't want to do that, right?
Speaker:So don't make smash burgers.
Speaker:Make one pot dinners, right?
Speaker:You can make one pot dinner.
Speaker:You could.
Speaker:Take a jar of marinara sauce.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you could throw frozen meatballs in it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In a pot.
Speaker:And you could even get this, throw the raw zdi in there with like a quart of chicken stock.
Speaker:And it'll all cook together and a zdi absorb it.
Speaker:That's another shameless plug for our book, the Kitchen short cut Bible.
Speaker:Cause we have recipes in the kitchen shortcut Bible for one.
Speaker:Let's say one pot chili Mac.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And it's the pasta and the chili.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Everything in the pot at the same time on the stove, and there are a ton of one pot cookbooks out
Speaker:there.
Speaker:I interviewed kwoklyn wan a few months back.
Speaker:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker:He's an Asian chef in the UK and he just wrote a book this year called One Walk One Pot, and his recipes
Speaker:I, I, I, so, so I'm gonna forward us a little bit and it was great.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And you're right about all that.
Speaker:But one of Bruce's suggestions, and this just kills me about if you hate the mess, is invite a friend over and tell them that
Speaker:up.
Speaker:I know what, we have friends who would do that.
Speaker:I would never take that deal.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:But we do have friends who would do that.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:I can, I'm not gonna name them cause they're probably listening.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Wait.
Speaker:So I'm gonna stop.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And say that you are super type A controlling.
Speaker:So you would let someone clean up Absolutely.
Speaker:Your pots
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:But they, but if you're the kinda person who would, then you should invite friends over to do that.
Speaker:you'd no more let anyone clean your pots,
Speaker:but I'm not.
Speaker:Not cooking because I'm afraid of the mess.
Speaker:I'm the one who made the smash burgers.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then cleaned them up.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:I, I can't imagine this one.
Speaker:I can't because it's so, uh, why do I wanna say disheartening?
Speaker:Now I have to tell you that Bruce and I have a system for cleaning.
Speaker:You probably know this, but we throw.
Speaker:Big, huge, giant dinner parties, multi coarsed plated like a restaurant.
Speaker:It makes the smash
Speaker:burgers look like it's clean.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Plates go down on the table.
Speaker:We serve it like restaurants serve from the right and I don't know what all wait, serve from the
Speaker:Anyway, I mean, we really do.
Speaker:We put the plates down simultaneously.
Speaker:We do the entire big Fandango, and these are multi-course affairs, but we always say, That, uh, since we live so rurally
Speaker:And it goes really fast to have a system.
Speaker:And I'm not gonna actually go into all the details of our system because I think you have to make a
Speaker:Lemme just say one thing is that I don't clean pots till the end, so I find that pots in the sink are disheartening.
Speaker:They also take up a lot of room.
Speaker:I know, and I find it just disheartening to have a big pot in the sink, and I'm cleaning that and looking at a counter full of plates
Speaker:Because it makes me feel as if there's less to do by the time I get to the pots.
Speaker:Very important is you run the dishwasher in the middle of dinner.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:And I know a lot of people don't like to do that cuz the dishwashers are loud.
Speaker:But we bought a new dishwasher that is so quiet that we could run it.
Speaker:You don't even know it's going well.
Speaker:Also, we don't live in an open, well we did live in an open concept home, but we've made it a closed concept home.
Speaker:So we have a door on our dining room and, uh, we can't hear.
Speaker:I mean, you know, we, we.
Speaker:Can't hear it from the dining room cuz we close it off.
Speaker:So, but, but that saves so much time and so much mess when you do that.
Speaker:So when Mark clears a course away, he loads a dishwasher.
Speaker:Even if it's half full, even half, half it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So that way after dinner when everyone leaves, we empty it and we can fill it all back up again.
Speaker:It very little to, to do by hand if it's, yeah, if it's half full, I run it on a quick.
Speaker:A light wash cycle and you know, I just spread the plates out and I spread the glasses out so that there
Speaker:And I just, I, I do that and then, you know, it's really easy suddenly because some of the dishes are taken care of.
Speaker:This is all part of the problem of mess and why people don't cook for themselves, but they also don't cook
Speaker:What's wrong with people?
Speaker:I, shopping is the best part of cooking.
Speaker:Uh, I love supermarkets.
Speaker:I love going down.
Speaker:Every aisle.
Speaker:I like looking at new things.
Speaker:I find a new pasta, a new sugar, a new nut, a new something that I never to tell you that never saw
Speaker:before.
Speaker:I have to say that when we travel, Bruce goes to supermarkets as a destination.
Speaker:You go to the markets.
Speaker:like it's a museum,
Speaker:you can learn so much about a place by seeing what people buy to eat.
Speaker:It's great.
Speaker:And I do that not just when we go to Europe or we go to South America.
Speaker:I do that when we go to the south or we go out west or we go to the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:I mean, no matter where we go, but I love shopping.
Speaker:If you don't like shopping, then buy your food online.
Speaker:Have it delivered, have someone else send it for you.
Speaker:Or use meal planning, you know, services and have your meals delivered to you.
Speaker:You could still cook them, but you don't have to go shopping.
Speaker:So there are so many ways around shopping and uh, yeah,
Speaker:it's true.
Speaker:You can see this and it's really wild to watch like the difference in fresh.
Speaker:Fish, all those kind of things.
Speaker:And then to have it delivered too.
Speaker:Yeah, why not?
Speaker:Is always a kind of an amazing thing.
Speaker:Something we live too rurally for.
Speaker:But I like to go shopping, so it's a good thing.
Speaker:And if you don't know how to cook, of course we're gonna say that you should buy cookbooks.
Speaker:Of course you know that you should buy our cookbooks.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:And you know, I'm gonna tell you to watch our TikTok channel cooking with Bruce and Mark and you
Speaker:But there are actually.
Speaker:Other sources and one of them, uh, is craftsy.com.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:C R A F T S y.com.
Speaker:There are tons of cooking classes there.
Speaker:Another one is called Chef Steps.
Speaker:There are lots of places where you can learn the basics of cooking.
Speaker:In fact, Bruce.
Speaker:Has basically upped his game with Chuan food by watching a ton of YouTube channels.
Speaker:I have fallen in love with these two.
Speaker:It's Amanda, her name is Amanda.
Speaker:Don't know her last name.
Speaker:She lives in the uk.
Speaker:She's Chinese and it's Amanda Tastes is the name of her YouTube channel.
Speaker:And then the Taste Show with Chef John, who is a SIS one chef.
Speaker:I have learned so much from them and upped my sis one game.
Speaker:So you have, you can too.
Speaker:Yeah, it's, it's a great resource.
Speaker:Thank gosh for these things.
Speaker:I know a lot of cookbook authors get really mad at the internet because it's so cut into book sales, which it has.
Speaker:Listen, there's no doubt about that.
Speaker:But there's another way that it's kind of fantastic because you can learn so much.
Speaker:You can learn anything.
Speaker:I'm watching very obscure preparations of, you know, some hand Chuan hand meat pie.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And you can learn so much about how to actually shape it and form it.
Speaker:Better, or I say it as the writer better even than you could by reading instructions in a cookbook.
Speaker:Well, one of the things that helps with cookbooks is when they have lots of pictures, of course, and we are gonna talk in
Speaker:So you could see what things look like as you cut them, shape them and br them.
Speaker:So you can go to YouTube and see some of that.
Speaker:Or you can get a book like our upcoming look and cook.
Speaker:And then you could do it that way.
Speaker:up next, as is traditional.
Speaker:Our one minute cooking tip,
Speaker:replace your salt shaker with a salt cellar.
Speaker:Salt cellar's.
Speaker:Basically, it's just a fancy word for a little bowl.
Speaker:Salt cellar.
Speaker:You mean a guy that comes in your kitchen and sells you Salt every day.
Speaker:C E L L A R.
Speaker:Because it is easier to throw in a pinch or two while cooking.
Speaker:If you just grab it, you just reach your hand into that salt cellar, get rid of the salt shaker.
Speaker:If it's humid, you're not gonna get anything out of it.
Speaker:It gets clogged up.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you just, you can't even.
Speaker:Get a sense of how much is coming out.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Don't keep a salt shaker by your stove get a salt cellar.
Speaker:It is, it is really crucial.
Speaker:And you know, I mean, it's easy to, it's easier, at least for me to know how much salt I'm putting
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:If I pick it up with my hands and sprinkle it on, I see it.
Speaker:Exactly going on and I can control the salt content better.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Before we get to the next segment of the show, let me tell you that it would be great if you could rate the show, if you
Speaker:Thank you very much for doing that.
Speaker:We certainly appreciate that in the vast landscape of Food and Cooking podcast.
Speaker:Thank you so much for supporting ours and being a part of it.
Speaker:We see the likes and the comments that come through, for example, on Apple Podcasts, and they.
Speaker:Really, honestly give us motivation to keep going.
Speaker:So thank you so much for doing that.
Speaker:Up next Bruce's interview with Stacey Mayon Fong.
Speaker:She is the author of 50 Pies, 50 States.
Speaker:This is a book that's getting a ton of play right now, and it is so amazing that Bruce landed this
Speaker:Today I'm having a lot of fun speaking with Stacy mei yan Fong, author of 50 Pies, 50 states, an
Speaker:Welcome, Stacy.
Speaker:Hey, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker:I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker:Hey, you start your book with two simple yet deep questions.
Speaker:They are, where are you from and where do you call home?
Speaker:So tell me how these questions informed your journey to write.
Speaker:50 pies, 50 states.
Speaker:So I basically started the project because I was trying to figure out like what home really meant to me.
Speaker:Um, I was born in Singapore, grew up in Indonesia and Hong Kong, and then decided to, um, go to college in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker:So a real journey.
Speaker:And when I moved to states, All my friends would go home during the holidays to like the house that they grew up in.
Speaker:They could see their same bedroom that they had when they were like 16 years old, like before they left for college.
Speaker:And because I moved around so much as a kid, like I didn't really have that.
Speaker:And even when we were living in Hong Kong, we moved apartments and houses a lot as well cuz of my dad's job.
Speaker:So, I was trying to figure out like what home really meant to me.
Speaker:Like when you grow up, you're kind of taught like home is your house where your family is, right?
Speaker:Like that is.
Speaker:Home.
Speaker:But what I've come to realize through baking all these pies and my time in America is that home really is just a mindset and
Speaker:And I kind of got to do that exploration in the most delicious way.
Speaker:And what I've learned is that everybody loves pie.
Speaker:And even if you have like a funny story where like you baked a pie and everything went.
Speaker:Like it's still a funny story and everybody still talks about it.
Speaker:It's like kind of the most like tender and wholesome thing cuz like even bad pie is good, but like bad cake is terrible, you know?
Speaker:Hey, you offer up a few pies before you begin your journey across the US pies that.
Speaker:Represent your childhood and the places you grew up, like the Vivid Green Paden cream pie.
Speaker:Tell me about that.
Speaker:Basically, when I started the project, I just baked through all the 50 pies, but I.
Speaker:When I was putting together the book, I thought it'd be really important for people to like get to know me
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:So I decided that I was gonna bake a pie for Singapore where I was born in Anisha, where I
Speaker:Um, and then also a pie for.
Speaker:Savannah where I went to college and then Brooklyn where I live now.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And so it's kind of like, you know, going on four dates with me before you decide if you would like to
Speaker:So tell me about the vivid green cream pie.
Speaker:It looks amazing.
Speaker:pandan is a flavor that's very common in Singapore.
Speaker:It's kind of like, it's a green leaf that makes this like beautiful neon green color, like naturally.
Speaker:And it's got kind of like a floral coconut kind of flavor and.
Speaker:It's a very important flavor for me growing up because there's this one bakery in Singapore called Bungo on solo, and every time we
Speaker:And I was always so annoyed that I had to carry this big box, but so happy that I had it.
Speaker:For breakfast the next day when we got home.
Speaker:And just kind of like that taste and set memory.
Speaker:And then also for the pie, I decided to take a play on a ground cracker crust and I did it with Conan, um, cream
Speaker:He was my best friend.
Speaker:He has since passed, but he would feed me these Conan biscuits all the time whenever I went to his house, mostly
Speaker:So he would just feed me these crackers to.
Speaker:Make me shut up, but also because he loved me, so I thought I would combine all of those into a little pie for Singapore.
Speaker:That's a great story.
Speaker:So let's.
Speaker:Go on.
Speaker:One more of those dates with you before we get to your American pies.
Speaker:I love that the pies are sweet and savory.
Speaker:There's a savory Hong Kong style macaroni pie.
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:And how is a pie made with overcooked macaroni and spam?
Speaker:So comforting and delicious.
Speaker:So in Hong Kong there are these, I would say they're like Hong Kong style diners called Cha Changs, and
Speaker:People in Hong Kong's take on western cuisine.
Speaker:So there's this one, like when you enter a chohan, you order, you get eggs, you tell them how you would like
Speaker:So there's like deep fried french toast.
Speaker:Or my favorite is this macaroni soup, and there's no such thing as al dente.
Speaker:The macaroni is hammered.
Speaker:It is so soft, but it's so, so delicious and it's basically like, Cream of chicken soup and broth, macaroni, like,
Speaker:And it's kind of like the most like comforting way to start your day.
Speaker:And I thought it'd be really funny to like, Put it into pie form.
Speaker:So it's like kind of a mix between like quiche and this macaroni soup and because like pie is very comforting
Speaker:So it's like a combination of the two of them.
Speaker:As we go through the states alphabetically in your book, we get not only a delicious recipe for each
Speaker:So you clearly did a lot of research on the US to write this book.
Speaker:What was the most surprising fact you discovered about any one state?
Speaker:I feel like it's not really a fact.
Speaker:It's more like when I got to South Dakota, I was like really stumped at what I was gonna do and I.
Speaker:Because the universe does wonderful things.
Speaker:My buddy Matt, who got the Massachusetts by, he had just done a graphic design project for a bunch of historians that, um, their
Speaker:And I thought, oh my gosh, like I should talk to them.
Speaker:So I ended up emailing Eric and Eric.
Speaker:Um, gets the pie in the book and Eric invited me out to South Dakota.
Speaker:So I ended up flying out to South Dakota to meet him, and Eric introduced me to Sean Sherman, the
Speaker:And so for the South Dakota pie, I did a sunflower milk and wild rice pudding pie with a bergamot and berry tooth sweet.
Speaker:And then like a crunchy maple papita crunch on top with a blue corn crust.
Speaker:And all of that is inspired by Native American cuisine, which is something that you don't really see a lot in
Speaker:You know, you can get like Szechuan food and Korean food and Chinese food and Mexican food and like
Speaker:It should be as common.
Speaker:And it was like, it's so seasonal.
Speaker:It's textural.
Speaker:It's so wonderful that like, yeah, I just.
Speaker:For the small amount of knowledge I know about it.
Speaker:Now I just want to go fully deep dive into it.
Speaker:What's intriguing to me is your pie from Iowa, a sour cream raisin pie, a meringue top beauty from a state where I
Speaker:So you didn't tell me about this pie and why you chose it to represent Iowa.
Speaker:So it originated in Iowa from like I believe like German immigrants.
Speaker:And I actually learned this from someone that I met in an Uber pool named Jane.
Speaker:She ended up getting the North Dakota pie cuz she's from North Dakota.
Speaker:But she told me all about like the origins of sour cream and raisin pie, which in theory sounds
Speaker:But this is also coming from a girl whose favorite ice cream flavor is rum raisin.
Speaker:And I was six years old, so who knows what I was doing, but it's.
Speaker:Kind of like this beautiful mingling of like flavors that are very common in Europe that were brought
Speaker:And the thing, like something that's preserved under a meringue top, like it stays fresher
Speaker:So it's like, the thing with pie is that even during times of like seasonal depression, like people have
Speaker:How like the sour cream and raisin pie came about was so that they could have pie in the winter months using like dried
Speaker:wild blueberries, are some of the best things to come from Maine.
Speaker:I am thrilled that your recipe for wild blueberry and moxie pie says frozen berries are just fine
Speaker:Let's talk about the other ingredient, moxie for those unfamiliar with it.
Speaker:What is it and how do you use it in a
Speaker:pie?
Speaker:One of the coolest parts about America is there's so many like regional sodas and I mean, I did learn about this because of
Speaker:What I found so cool about Moxie is that it never really passed the Northeast.
Speaker:Like it's a very like concentrated like Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, that area.
Speaker:And I would say it's like the flavor profile is kind of like a bitter root beer.
Speaker:I'm someone that like loves like ANM Amara or an aperitif, and it's kind of like the soda version of that.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And so I thought it'd be really cool to like counteract.
Speaker:Kind of the sweet tartness of a wild blueberry with something that's like a little more bitter and herbaceous.
Speaker:So I reduced, um, the moxie down to a syrup, which I thought would be pretty nice way to like flavor the rest of the pie.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And yeah, I think frozen blueberries are totally fine.
Speaker:Like most of the time when fruits are frozen, especially Wyman, that's my favorite frozen brand of fruit.
Speaker:Like they are frozen at like the peak of.
Speaker:Freshness and like the peak of flavor.
Speaker:And sometimes you can't get that like from a fresh blueberry, like half of it might be like too hot or something.
Speaker:And so they're like a little moldy, like frozen fruit is fine, like home, like store-bought pie crust.
Speaker:It's fine too.
Speaker:There's a whimsical pie in your book that is so satisfying to you.
Speaker:Look at even the photo and the recipe.
Speaker:It's from Nevada.
Speaker:Tell me about the all you can eat buffet pie.
Speaker:So for Nevada, I was really stumped at what I could do to represent a state as grand as Nevada.
Speaker:So I thought that I would focus on the Nevada that I knew and that was Vegas.
Speaker:So my dad used to work in the hotel industry, so uh, me and my sisters went on a business trip with him to Las Vegas and.
Speaker:It was just like seeing everything in excess.
Speaker:Like, you know, we grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Speaker:Everything's like smaller, like fridges are smaller.
Speaker:Apartments are smaller, and everything in America just seemed so vast and wide.
Speaker:And the thing that I thought was so wild was the all you can eat buffet.
Speaker:And the buffet was, um, Invented in Nevada, which is pretty cool too.
Speaker:And so I thought it'd be really fun if I challenged myself.
Speaker:It made an all you can e buffet into a pie.
Speaker:So, and I literally was just like staring at my kitchen and I looked at my cornbread pan, it's like a lodge cast
Speaker:And I was like, oh, like half of it could be savory, half it could be sweet.
Speaker:And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna look at the all you can eat buffet menus of every single.
Speaker:Um, major casino on the strip, and then I wrote down like the common denominators between each one.
Speaker:And so when I blind baked the crust, the crust became like little pie compartments that I could fill.
Speaker:So on the savory side, it's an herb crust and it goes shrimp cocktails, Caesar salad, crab
Speaker:And then on the.
Speaker:Sweet side, it's an all butter crust and it's um, cheesecake chocolate mousse and ice cream sundae and a fruit tart.
Speaker:And it's like one of those things where like when you're in Vegas, like you do get to have your pie needed too.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And I wanted to kind of like have a funny play on that.
Speaker:Like in pie form,
Speaker:you could make that pie for a dinner party and it's like all the courses all along.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:It's, it's your own little pie tasting menu.
Speaker:You have everything
Speaker:from pulled pork pie from North Carolina to wild rice pudding, pie from South Dakota.
Speaker:What advice do you have for someone who's about to use your book and make their very first pie?
Speaker:I think start with your state if you want to, or honestly, you can do what I did when I started the project and
Speaker:That's kind of a nice place for you to begin and.
Speaker:Yeah, like my advice is just if making the crust stresses you out, then buy a store bought crust, then focus on the filling.
Speaker:It's kind of like com compartmentalizing your thoughts to make them as digestible as possible.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I love that you are willing and encourage people, if necessary, use frozen fruit.
Speaker:Use a pre-made crust, but to explore.
Speaker:The entire country full of pie fillings from sweet to savory that you have in your book.
Speaker:Stacey Maam Fong, author of 50 Pies, 50 states and immigrants.
Speaker:Love letter to the United States through Pie.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Good luck with the book and thank you for sharing some of your insight with me this morning.
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:This is a very wonderful way to start my day.
Speaker:I bet you she gets a lot of pushback about people saying, oh, I'm from Iowa.
Speaker:That's not my policy.
Speaker:Well, she did.
Speaker:She had to choose something that represent well.
Speaker:She chose a person.
Speaker:Each state has a person, and then that person influenced her.
Speaker:Pie.
Speaker:And some of them are really interesting.
Speaker:Some of them are really in grand.
Speaker:I mean, you know, my grandmother was from Oklahoma and my grandmother made the world's best lemon marine pie.
Speaker:And so I think of Oklahoma and Lemon Maren pie, but I know that most people don't make that connection.
Speaker:That's your personal idiosyncrasy.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:It's totally my.
Speaker:Personal idiosyncrasy and I think about my grandmother's lemon Marrin pie and to me that's Oklahoma.
Speaker:But I guess there would be a lot of pushback in this cuz there are a lot of pies that are more around.
Speaker:There are, but so many of them were just so original.
Speaker:Like her all, you can eat buffet pie from neada.
Speaker:It's like, like wow.
Speaker:It's like, wow,
Speaker:God, it's the old days.
Speaker:I remember being a college student going to Las Vegas before I'd go hiking with friends out in Utah.
Speaker:This is really a million years ago, and we would stay at the cheap Las Vegas hotels back in the
Speaker:Stay in them.
Speaker:You don't want to stay in though Circus.
Speaker:Now they're circus.
Speaker:God, you can get a room for $19.
Speaker:Get 19.
Speaker:Anyway, they were cheap back in the day.
Speaker:They were all cheap.
Speaker:Even the fancy ones and the buffets were always free.
Speaker:Now like the Bellagio, the most
Speaker:60, 70 bucks.
Speaker:Yeah, really expensive and we would go and carb load before we went hiking at the free buffet.
Speaker:It's so very funny though.
Speaker:Buffet pie.
Speaker:All you can eat.
Speaker:Buffet up next.
Speaker:Pie up next as is traditional.
Speaker:The answer to the question, what is making us happy and food this week?
Speaker:hunan preserved mushrooms.
Speaker:Preserved mushrooms, and we are having steamed silk and tofu that is gonna be covered in a spicy sauce.
Speaker:Spicy sauce, spoon preserved mushrooms and my homemade chili oil and ginger and scions.
Speaker:Oh, I'll let you know how that goes.
Speaker:I think it is the same thing for me and believe it or not, um, Bruce made a dish the other day with spicy preserved
Speaker:Bit of porking cabbage dish with the preserved urging tau chilies and they are hot.
Speaker:They are hot and spicy and sour and preserved, tasting a little.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That sauce, that sauce that you use them in is very traditional, very authentic to Sichuan and in the US
Speaker:That's actually what that is.
Speaker:If you look in a lot of cookbooks like Fusha, Dunlop Cookbook, Dunlop, she refers to it as fish flavor.
Speaker:Pork and that's has nothing to do with fish, but those are the sauces that would've been put
Speaker:So, but are these are all with the
Speaker:make feeling that when we went to Mr.
Speaker:Ye in Dallas when I was a child and we got pork surfer right, they aren't using fermented preserved or it's real.
Speaker:They're actually really hard to find.
Speaker:The mala market.com is a place when they have them in stock, you can get them there.
Speaker:And I just actually ordered a jar from yami by.com and they're.
Speaker:They're really good, but they're not easy to find.
Speaker:No, it's difficult.
Speaker:No, it is difficult to find.
Speaker:So that's the podcast for this week.
Speaker:Thanks for being a part of it.
Speaker:We appreciate that you're on this journey with us, and we hope that you do in fact, find the time to cook and time to make meals for
Speaker:the people.
Speaker:And please go to our Facebook group Cooking with Bruce and Mark, join the conversation, share with
Speaker:We would love to.
Speaker:To hear that and we would love to have you back for another episode.
Speaker:So subscribe and you won't miss this song.
