Gillian Beck: A Casual Culinary Chat About The Recipe Index

Summary

The Joy of Cooking Podcast – Episode Summary

Podcast: The Joy of Cooking Podcast
Episode: Gillian Beck: A Casual Culinary Chat About The Recipe Index
Date: November 19, 2025
Hosts: John Becker, Megan Scott, Shannon Larson
Guest: Jillian Beck Vanhemstra

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the evolving nature of classic recipes, meal planning strategies for busy families, the value and nuance of a well-crafted recipe index, and the traditions of communal cooking and sharing. Featuring guest and friend Jillian Beck Vanhemstra, the team discusses not just recipes from “Joy of Cooking” but also the deeper stories behind them: from canning club memories and kitchen hacks to the thoughtful process of indexing a cookbook for generations of cooks to use.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Great Dry Brining Debate (00:55–04:30)

• What Is Dry Brining?
  • Hosts debate the culinary payoff and practicality of dry brining, especially around Thanksgiving.
  • John Becker reflects:
    “In the olden times, [dry brining was] known as salting with no hyphen involved... It’s great for turkeys, good for roasts, but... I’m just really starting to question how often I need to do that.” (01:22)
• Real-Life Applications:
  • Sometimes, salting just before cooking produces delicious results; complicated prep isn’t always necessary.

2. What We’ve Been Cooking (04:30–09:03)

• Shannon’s Cottage Pie & Mashed Potatoes:
  • Comfort food, with secret ingredient: “A lot of salted Kerrygold butter... and usually if I have horseradish, I add a little horseradish to the mashed potatoes too.” (05:10)
• Cozy Weather Memories:
  • One rare Portland storm causes neighborhood excitement (05:34).
• John & Megan’s Week:
  • Pan-seared salmon (sometimes sockeye, sometimes farmed), simple baked potatoes (often with creative toppings like spicy horseradish sour cream).

3. Joy Scouts Recipe of the Week: Lemon Meringue Pie (07:34–08:54)

• Expert Tips:
  • Kate’s advice: “Make sure that when you cook the filling... bring it to a full boil because of the enzyme in egg yolks that will cause it to get runny if you don’t cook it enough.” (07:42)
  • Italian meringue preferred for stability.
• Pie-Only Lives Once:
  • Must be eaten within 1–2 days for peak enjoyment.

4. Welcome Jillian Beck Vanhemstra (09:03–09:56)

• The Canning Club Connection:
  “That’s kind of how we’ve met most of our Portland friends... through canning club, which has been really fun.” (09:37)

5. Kitchen Inspiration & Remedies (09:56–12:04)

• Presents from the Garden & Japanese Remedies:
  • Jillian gifts quince and introduces Karin Hachimitsu, a Japanese home remedy: “Chop up your quince... pour in honey to cover it and let it ferment on the counter for a week.” (11:03)
  • Used as a soothing tea for cold season.

6. Traditional & New Thanksgiving Sides (12:04–20:14)

• Espaghetti Verde:
  • New recipe tried, featuring poblanos and Mexican crema: “You just make a pureed super green sauce for spaghetti.” (12:35)
• Escabeche Tradition:
  • Bright pickled vegetables now a Thanksgiving staple:
    “That meal needs more acid, more spice, more color... so escabeche complements the meal perfectly.” (18:10)
• Jam Session:
  • Santa Rosa Plum Jam as a family treasure—“You bite into one and you’re like, it’s a Santa Rosa. You can smell them from down the block because they’re so fragrant.” (21:10)

7. Food Memories & Dorm Room Cooking (14:31–16:13)

• Handwritten Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe:
  • Jillian: “My friend’s mom hand-copied out the Joy of Cooking chocolate chip cookies recipe for me when I was in high school. I memorized it and took it to college.” (14:44)
• Dorm Room Cooks United:
  • Stories of toaster ovens, communal kitchens, and macaroni nostalgia.

8. Meal Planning Wisdom (24:28–34:31)

• Jillian’s System:
  • “I have a paper meal planner and I meal plan for the week on Fridays... before you make your meal plan, you have to clean out the fridge and check what you have.” (25:22)
  • Magnetic notepad on the fridge keeps everyone in the loop.
• Family Involvement, Foraging Days, and Pizza Night:
  • Family can request favorites. Everyone gets “foraging days” for leftovers.
  • “If I'm on top of it and planning ahead... then I make the King Arthur Flour crispy cheesy pan pizza recipe.” (31:24)
  • For emergencies: “Tortilla pizza... It’s better than frozen pizza!” (32:21)

9. Cookbook Exploration & Creative Inspiration (36:14–38:29)

• Cookbook Club:
  • Trading ideas from new cookbooks is key to avoiding rut meals.
  • Julia Turshen’s “What Goes With What” praised as a guide for assembling flavorful meals from what's on hand.

10. Signature Dishes & Salad Strategies (39:51–43:11)

• Signature: The Salad
  • Jillian: “I make [salad] lots of different ways... I usually make salad dressing of the week because my wife won’t eat store bought.” (40:05)
  • Creative annual ritual—Dayenu Salad—using spring garden finds for Passover: “It seems like there’s nothing out there, but it ends up being a bowl of salad... it could have been enough.” (41:22)
• Radicchio Revelation:
  • Soak in cold water for 1+ hour to mellow bitterness: “It will be deliciously bitter instead of painfully bitter.” (42:04)

11. The Recipe Index: A Crucial Cookbook Tool (45:26–54:54)

• Listener Question:
  • “I have a problem finding recipes when I search a specific recipe. Do you have any guidance on how to use the index?” (45:35)
• Tips for Navigating the Index:
  • For distinctive dishes (e.g., cassoulet, brownies), search by name.
  • For basic dishes, search by main ingredient, then recipe type (e.g., soup, stew, salad).
  • Use “about” sections for grouped recipes (e.g., About Artichokes lists all artichoke recipes).
  • For baking: search by dish type first (e.g., cake, pie).
  • Cross-references for classic recipes, cuisines, and dietary needs.
• Behind the Scenes:
  • Indexing is intense and time-limited; professional indexers are often essential.
  • “It can make or break somebody's experience with a book. And it's... not acknowledged enough, like what indexers do and how important it is.” (47:21)
• Meta-Index Tools:
  • Shannon: Uses indexes across various cookbooks to compare approaches to seasonal ingredients.
  • John: Recommends "Eat Your Books" for digital cross-cookbook searching.

12. Recipe Assignment: Cabbage Gratin (56:47–58:12)

• Thanksgiving Side Recommendation:
  • Cabbage Gratin from page 225: “You sauté a leek... then add cabbage, sauté, mix into a custard base with eggs, cream, cheese... bake until brown and melty. It’s a really great Thanksgiving side.” (57:08)
  • Shannon: “I’ve made that recipe like three times. It’s so good. It’s mouthwateringly good.” (57:16)

13. Food Traditions, Travel, and What’s Next (59:27–61:52)

• Looking Forward:
  • Jillian plans to make pierogies with the cabbage gratin for dinner.
  • Megan and John traveling for a family wedding—excited for North Carolina BBQ and local hot dog traditions.
  • Shannon: looking forward to sushi in a Seattle hotel room—“That is a very special delicacy.” (61:46)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Homemade Comfort:
  “I just salt those puppies and throw them in the cast iron. Like, I don’t have the wherewithal to think ahead. I’m barely keeping up as it is.” —Shannon (04:17)

• On Salad Inspiration:
  “My signature dish is salad... throughout the year I’m just like, what’s in the fridge? How can I make it a salad?” —Jillian (40:05)

• On Cookbook Indexing:
  “Indexing is... not acknowledged enough, like what indexers do and how important it is.” —John (47:21)

• On Creative Cooking:
  “What do we have? And how can I throw it together in a formula that’s going to end up with something people want to eat?” —Jillian on Julia Turshen’s approach (37:06)

• On Radicchio’s Secret:
  “The bitter ingredient in radicchio is water soluble. If you soak your radicchio for at least an hour in cold water, then it will be deliciously bitter instead of painfully bitter.” —Jillian (42:04)

• On Family Food Rituals:
  “That meal needs more acid, needs more spice, needs more color, and it was so good. So escabeche complemented the meal so perfectly that we always had to have it at Thanksgiving.” —Jillian (18:10)

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:55 – Thanksgiving dry brining debate
• 04:30 – Favorite home-cooked meals of the week
• 07:34 – Joy Scouts Recipe: Lemon Meringue Pie tips
• 09:03 – Jillian joins: canning club and communal cooking
• 11:03 – Karin Hachimitsu: Japanese quince and honey remedy
• 18:10 – Escabeche at Thanksgiving history
• 24:28 – Jillian’s structured meal-planning system
• 31:24 – Friday night pizza rituals (King Arthur, tortilla pizzas)
• 36:14 – Using cookbooks and gathering inspiration
• 40:05 – Salad as signature dish and homemade dressings
• 42:04 – Radicchio soaking tip
• 45:35 – Recipe index: how to navigate and use it well
• 56:47 – Cabbage gratin recommended recipe assignment

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Additional Resources & Food for Thought

• Cookbook References: Snowy Cabin Cookbook; Julia Turshen’s What Goes With What
• Meal-Planning Tools: Magnetic fridge notepad, whiteboards, cookbook clubs
• Food Community: Canning club, informal cookbook “potlucks,” recipe-sharing traditions

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For Next Week:
The team will tackle creative uses for black currant vinegar. Listeners are encouraged to try out the cabbage gratin (p. 225) and share their results on Instagram @thejoyofcooking.

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This episode champions the joy of food as community, curiosity, and practical problem-solving—whether it’s updating icons, planning for picky eaters, or letting the index be your map through generations of kitchen tradition.

Transcript

[A]

Sa.

[B]

Welcome to the Joy of Cooking podcast. Each week we set the table for discussion about recipes and stories from the authors of the Joy of Cooking, kitchen victories and misadventures, and what we're cooking and eating right now. We're glad you've joined us at the table today. I'm Shannon Larson, home cook, Joy of Cooking user and fan and persimmon enthusiast.

[C]

I'm Megan Scott, co Author of the 2019 edition of the Joy of Cooking. I. I'm a food editor by day and avoider of dish duty by night. And sometimes I forget baked potatoes exist. Then I remember them and am happy.

[D]

I'm Jon Becker, 4th Generation Co author and steward of the Joy of Cooking, America's oldest family run cookbook, and I am dangerously close to becoming a dry brining truther.

[C]

You gotta explain. You gotta explain what that means.

[D]

I feel like this is a touchy subject since we're getting pretty close to Thanksgiving, because I do think that, you know, dry brining, AKA in the olden times, in the olden times known as salting with no hyphen involved. You know, it's great for turkeys, good for roasts, but I don't know, I've cooked like, I think four things over like the last week and a half where I have just salted something right before it went in the pan and it was delicious. And I'm just really starting to question like how often I need to do that.

[C]

It's nice if you do it far enough in advance, but if you do it and just like wait an hour or so, that's not long enough. Right? Because then the salt will draw out the moisture. Of what? Of the food. And then it will just be wetter and less likely to Brown versus if you do it like 24 hours ahead of time, then it makes the food more Brown. Who's thinking 24 hours ahead?

[D]

I mean, some of us are lucky that way and. Well, I, I don't know. For Thanksgiving, obviously it makes sense cuz we're all obsessing about that and hopefully not too much. But yeah, I've been really happy with just the devil may care version of saltine.

[C]

Yeah, I agree. I think it makes sense for a turkey because you are thinking about it so far in advance.

[A]

Hopefully.

[D]

Well, and it's plus you, you know, you really do want to season like the interior of the roast and so it does help with that. But yeah, specifically I'm talking about like some salmon filets that we pan seared and some roast chicken. We did like some chicken Thighs where I salted, like, right beforehand, and it was perfect. And then also we. We had some free steak. That.

[C]

Free steak.

[D]

Free steak. Not a very interesting story. My mom just happened to have some steak that she wanted to get rid of. So. But yeah, all of those applications, like dry brining, while nice, just not necessary. And now I'm questioning, like, really how much we need to mention it in some of our basic recipes where it makes, like, a incremental improvement, but not necessarily like something you're going to be like, oh, wow.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. We're having all these conversations about how we want to approach recipes and topics for the 2031 edition, the 100th anniversary edition. So. And I think in some cases we'll tell, you know, we'll give readers the option, you know, you can dry brine this for up to 24 hours is as part of the recipe, and it's optional. But to what point might that confuse someone if they're not sure about it? And also if you don't know what dry brining is, then you have to go and read about it first. And then you're like, well, I don't have eight to 24 hours to do this thing. And so it might just be too much of a stretch, I think. So maybe simplifying it a bit.

[B]

Yeah, people would read that and then be like, well, maybe I won't do that tonight and I'll do that later. And then they never do and they give it to something else completely.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah. I think we do a pretty decent job of giving people the option and not spending too much time on it. But, yeah, just always have.

[C]

Questioning everything right now.

[D]

Got to question everything.

[B]

I don't think I, I rarely dry brine anything. Like, if I'm making chicken thighs, I just salt those puppies and throw them in the cast iron. Like, I don't have the wherewithal to think ahead. I'm barely keeping up as it is.

[C]

So, speaking of, what did you cook this week that you are still thinking about? Shannon?

[B]

We made our first cottage pie of the season last night, and it's not something we eat very often because we don't eat beef very often. Oh, my gosh, it's so comforting. And then we paired it with just like, a really simple radicchio salad because I thought we that, like, bitterness of the radicchio would, like, cut back on the richness of the cottage pie, which was perfect. And I have to say, I make good mashed potatoes. So I was eating, like, what's your secret? I Just love. No. A lot of salted kerrygold butter. I don't mess around with unsalted butter.

[C]

I don't know.

[B]

That's something I've actually wanted to ask you guys about sometime. And then half and half. And usually if I have horseradish, I add a little horseradish to the mashed potatoes too. And that's really. It's just a little. Little spice.

[C]

Little spice.

[B]

It was just such a comforting meal. We watched a scary movie on the sound.

[C]

Sounds great. It was really stormy last night too, so that just sounds very appealing.

[B]

All the candles were lit.

[C]

We had one thunder and lightning moment. Just one.

[B]

It was so loud.

[C]

It was so loud.

[B]

Neighbo neighborhood text thread, like, blew up immediately. They were like, what was that?

[C]

This is notable. This is notable. In Portland, like, we really don't get thunderstorms, so it was very, very exciting for us.

[D]

Yeah, but just one. So weird.

[C]

Yeah, it was loud. I saw someone on Reddit this morning saying, like, someone was like, why did we only get one thunder and lightning? And then someone was like, it's because in Portland we have artisanal small batch created thunder and lightning. I was like, yes, this is the. The best.

[B]

That's the right answer.

[C]

Yeah, that sounds delicious. Yeah, it was great.

[B]

What were you guys cooking this past week?

[D]

I feel like I seared some salmon flays like a few times now. Just falling back.

[C]

We've been keeping it simple. This was a really busy week. So.

[D]

Yeah, one of them. One. One time it was farmed Atlantic salmon because we. I don't know, I had to park at Whole Foods downtown and it was just like the easiest thing to get. And then the other time was sockeye. And, yeah, really good.

[C]

We also did do baked potatoes this week, which is hence my intro, because I sort of forget that you can just bake a potato and eat it.

[B]

Well, the best part of it is, like, you can have so many different topping options. Like we have Mexican baked potatoes or.

[C]

Japanese baked potatoes or throw some chili on there. Broccoli, whatever. Yeah. And you mentioned horseradish earlier. We got some extra, extra spicy horseradish from Cascade Locks because somebody there makes this. I don't know how they get it so hot, but really is.

[D]

It's curious.

[C]

Over the top and delicious. And so we've been stirring that into sour cream and then putting that on stuff. So. So good. Yeah. On the baked potatoes.

[D]

Yeah. I feel like there was a pub that closed in Cascade Locks, and they were the ones who were selling this, like, extremely spicy horseradish. But now it's just called, like Exit 44 horseradish because the pub is gone. And, yeah, I don't know. We stopped at a coffee shop on the way to the mushroom hunting thing that we did. And yeah, no, it was good to finally get reacquainted with such a strong and curious condiment.

[C]

So we want to talk about the Joy Scouts recipe of the week, which was lemon meringue pie on page 681. I don't really have any notes because I didn't make it because it's been a really busy week and I just didn't have a pie in me this week. However, it's a very solid recipe. I loved Kate's comment last week about making sure that when you cook the filling mixture, the lemon and cornstarch and egg, that you bring it to a full boil because of the enzyme that's in egg yolks that will cause it to get runny if you don't cook it enough. That's a really good note. And then using the Italian meringue instead of the plain, like French style meringue is really great because it, it just holds up a lot better over time. But yeah, either way, lemon meringue pie is a fleeting experience. You got to make it and then eat it within like a day or two. That's when it's best. So if you have made the lemon meringue pie, please share a photo with us on Instagram. Tag us at the Joy of Cooking. We would love to see what you are making.

[D]

I like using a torch with it because it, it, it has this like, thrill of the grill kind of aspect to it where it's like, oh, it's kind of high stakes because you might get a little too toasty.

[B]

But, you know, I love how much you guys love using your torch.

[C]

It's so great. It's the best cooking tool. It just makes you feel like a powerful person. You know.

[D]

We all need that.

[B]

Yes, we do.

[C]

This week we'd like to welcome our friend Jillian Beck Vanhemstra to the table. Thank you so much for joining us, Jillian.

[A]

Hello. I'm so excited to be here.

[C]

I normally read a bio for our guests, but you are our personal friend who just lives in Portland and we hang out with and we see at Canning Club. That's where we met. Canning Club, right?

[A]

Yep. I'm one of the many who got to meet these awesome people at Canning Club.

[C]

How long have you been going?

[A]

I can never remember what year it started, but my first meeting was the first anniversary.

[C]

Wow. I mean, I think it started in like 2010 or something, right?

[B]

Yeah, it's been going on for a long time.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's 14 years.

[C]

Nice. Yeah, that's like how I've said this before, but that's kind of how we've met. Most of our Portland friends is through canning club, which has been really fun and. But when I try to explain it to people, they're like, it doesn't really compute. Like, you know, what have you been cooking and eating this week that you're excited about?

[A]

Well, I actually brought you some presents because my friend Max has a very successful garden and they gave me a bunch of things from their garden and it's kind of like the last of the produce, you know. So I received quince from a neighbor and then Max gave me eggplant. All of you, all's favorite. And jalapenos, and then a bunch of these poblano peppers as well. So the thing that I brought for you that I made this week is something called Karin Hachimitsu. It's a Japanese home remedy that I learned when I was living in the countryside in Japan in 2001. So the way you make it, I brought you a little jar to try and I brought you a quince, one of these beautiful fragrant quinces. So the way you make it is you take a sterile jar and chop up your. You wash the quince, chop it up, skin and all, seeds and all, and put it in the jar and then just pour in honey to cover it and let it ferment on the counter at room temperature for about a week.

[C]

Nice.

[A]

And then strain out the quince. You keep the honey. And then it's a cold season remedy. So you just take a spoonful, mix it with hot water and drink it. And it's especially for sore throat, but also just like a cold season preventive, like you're elderberry syrup.

[C]

That sounds delicious too. I love so much.

[D]

Added bonus. It probably tastes really. It sounds like it tastes really good.

[A]

It tastes really good.

[C]

Yeah. I made a similar thing this week. We had one of our previous guests on the show, Sarah on who wrote the cookbook? Uma with her mother. Her mother has this jujube and ginger kind of honey infusion. And it's very similar in that you, you know, you have the jujubes and your grated ginger and you let that, you soak that with honey and you let it sit on your counter for a few days. You can, you just make a tea with it. Use like A tablespoon to make a hot tea and you can strain it or not strain it, depending on what you like. But I do love a throat coating tea remedy. Thank you, Jillian. That's very nice.

[A]

And on my list to cook with this big bag of poblano peppers is espaghetti verde. I was reading about it and Food and Wine magazine had like a feature about Texas barbecue sides. And I have never tried it and I cannot wait. It looks so good. Have you had it?

[D]

Yeah, we tried it for the first time a few months ago. Definitely want to repeat it sometime soon. It's very, very good.

[C]

Can you describe the ingredients that are in the sauce?

[A]

Yeah. So it's poblano chilies, garlic, Mexican crema, scallions, jalapeno, cilantro, cumin, salt, a good amount of butter, and then queso fresco for the garnish. And you just make like a pureed super green sauce for spaghetti.

[C]

Yum.

[B]

That sounds so good.

[D]

Yeah, really is.

[C]

Yeah. I remember we. I don't know why we didn't make it again, because we really liked it. I think it just was like, it's not in the repertoire yet. We just need to get it in there.

[D]

We need to actually pair it with some barbecue.

[C]

Yeah, that's the answer. And Jillian, what is your relationship to the Joy of Cooking?

[A]

I didn't grow up with it. And it's really. I actually, I'm going to be maybe too honest. Don't be offended. When I was growing up with the older editions, I didn't like them. It wasn't the kind of food that my family ate. It wasn't about the part of the country that I lived in. I mostly grew up in Hawaii. And I was like, eh, it's not my favorite cookbook. Until the 2019 edition when you all started bringing recipes to Canning Club that you were testing, I was like, okay, so this is going to be different. Different.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it is. So now what? I got the 2019 edition and now when I want to look up a recipe for something like, for example, the escabeche that we're going to talk about in a little bit, the recipe is in there. So, yeah, you all added so many good recipes and I love it now. Actually, one of my really good memories of the Joy of Cooking, my mom didn't have it, my family didn't have it. But my friend Claire, I thought her mom was a really good cook. Deborah, she is a really good cook and she was a Joy of Cooking fan and she like hand copied out the Joy of Cooking chocolate chip cookies recipe for me when I was in high school, and I memorized it and I took it to college with me and made cookies in my dorm room all the time. And, like, probably made a lot of my friends that way.

[C]

Awesome. That is a really good way to make friends in college. Did you have a kitchen in your dorm room?

[A]

We had, like, a kitchen down the hall, and I also had a toaster oven and a rice cooker.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

In my room.

[C]

Yeah. Did you guys cook at college at all?

[B]

Yeah, I. We.

[C]

I don't.

[B]

Technically, we weren't allowed to have things in our room, but my best friend and I roomed together freshman year, and we were like, well, we're cooking a little bit. But then I was out of the dorms my first year, like, into an apartment.

[C]

So, yeah, my dorm, it was new and kind of fancy. Ish. And we had, like, a big communal kitchen on the bottom floor that anybody could use. So that was really nice.

[D]

I actually did have a kitchen in my first, like, the first semester I went to. Went to college. The only time that was the case. But.

[C]

What'd you make?

[D]

A lot of macaroni and cheese, but, like, a very specific one. I was kind of, you know, would get kind of homesick and there, I mean, RIP this restaurant called the Montage was underneath the Morrison Bridge on the east side in Portland. And many a late night would go there with friends and have some oyster shooters and old Mac, which is just this, like, really simple heavy cream, parmesan, garlic, macaroni type thing. And so I would make that for, like, my roommate and people that would come over from down the hall. I think that the, like, the one time I. Actually there were a few times I had people over for, like, lemon herb chicken. I think it was. Yeah, I think it was from the 1997 edition. That's the addition I took with me to college.

[C]

So that sounds like, advanced, to be honest, for a college student in their freshman year. I mean, I wasn't making lemon chicken. Dorm.

[D]

I had a reputation to a cold.

[B]

Something from a certain family, Right.

[C]

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[A]

Actually, not exactly. I'm not a loyal follower of a recipe person. I'm a look at five recipes and use what I like from each one kind of person. But it's similar. You're going to get a similar result. So this escobeche, I brought a jar for everyone to try, and we were talking about how you all are going to be listening to this one right around Thanksgiving. So a few years ago, my friend Alex, who I always spend Thanksgiving with, brought a big jar of escobeche to Thanksgiving because, you know, that meal needs more acid, needs more spice, needs more color, and it was so good. So escabeche, you might think of it as taqueria, pickles. And the kind that we usually see is carrots, onions, and jalapenos and not a lot else. But the home version can have a lot of different ingredients. Like cauliflower is often in there. It can have radishes. It can have mushrooms. It can have even potatoes.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[A]

Huh.

[C]

Do you cook the potatoes first or.

[A]

Potatoes would be cooked first, yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

But this, I mean, escobeche is a little bit cooked. Like some recipes have you saute your veggies in oil first, and some have you just boil them in the brine for a few minutes. But, yeah, it's so good. When we had it, I thought it complemented the meal so perfectly that we always had to have it at Thanksg. And since then, the next year, Alex didn't have time to make it, so I had to learn how. And, yeah, since then, we've always had escapeche at Thanksgiving. What do you think when you taste it and you think about some turkey and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, can you see how it fits right in?

[D]

No. Absolutely. I feel like, you know, cranberry sauce does a good job of cutting through some of the richer foods that you serve at Thanksgiving, but this would be a perfect accompaniment to all of those things.

[C]

Yeah, I feel like. So I grew up, my family's Thanksgiving was more of a potluck than a fixed sort of meal. So we would have. And I Have a really large extended family. Family. You've been to one of these, John? Like, how many people would you say were there? Like, 50 people, 75 people? A lot.

[D]

Are you talking about, like, up. Up in the.

[C]

Yeah. In the mountains.

[D]

The family cabin. Yeah. That was, like, at least 60, I want to say.

[C]

Huge gathering.

[D]

So everybody brings a tiny cabin.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

Really small house. But everybody would just kind of bring stuff that they wanted to make. So. Yeah, there was a turkey, but there's also biscuits and fried chicken and collard greens and beans and, like, everything you can imagine.

[D]

You know, there's, like, tables in the basement. Tables, like, you know, up in the bedroom. Like, it was kind of. Kind of nuts.

[C]

But my pickles are obligatory. Like, there's always a variety of pickles. And I feel like this. The escobate would fit right in with that. And. And Thanksgiving desperately needs something tart and, like, reviving of your palate because it's such a. I mean, it. We love. I love the starches, I love the carbs. But, yeah, you gotta have something to cut through it. I also wanted to talk about your Santa Rosa plum jam, because that's, like, the thing that you. Whenever you bring it to Canning club, I feel like I put my game face on. Yeah. Like, that's the thing.

[B]

I want everybody around the table. We're all, like, eyeing each other.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

We need to do a secret trade for your okra pickles.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Before. Canning club. Under the table.

[C]

Down.

[D]

Oh, man.

[C]

The secret canning club.

[A]

We would never. We would never.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

No.

[D]

Edit this part out or destroy the recording.

[A]

Yeah. Santa Rosa plums are so important to me because part of my childhood, I grew up in California, where Santa Rosa plums are available at least at the farmer's market, maybe at the store, like, for a minute. And they were my dad's, like, number one favorite fruit. We had this experience over and over where I would try to share a plum with him. That thought was good. And he'd be like, it's not a Santa Rosa. So finally, in Oregon, I've never seen them at the store or at the farmer's market. They're hard to grow.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

They're not productive. They don't do well here. They're, like, not shelf stable at all. But I planted a tree with Santa Rosa plums and started getting good crops the last few years. And you know what? You bite into one and you're like, it's a Santa Rosa. You can smell them from down the block because they're so fragrant. And, yeah, I'M really glad you can appreciate that really special jam.

[D]

Yeah, the jam that I remember, that was a gateway to Santa Rosa's for me. That you made also had used rose petals.

[A]

I think I did, mainly just because they were in my front yard and they're the same color. So we had the, like, red. Deep red plums and the deep red rose petals, and they both have the fragrance, and the rose petals maybe add a little spice. Those ones that I have are a little bit spicy, so, yeah, that was a good combination.

[C]

I think that would be. I think the Santa Rosa. I mean, it's very precious, so I don't know if I'd want to even. I think I might be a little selfish and not share, but I think that would be good on the Thanksgiving table, like, instead of or in addition to a cranberry sauce, because it's very. I love how tart and bracing it is, and the color is just stunning. It's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing your fruit with us, because you. You gave us a jar of jam, and you also let us come pick from your tree, which was really special. And that tree is, like, half, so it's like a grafted. There are two different types of plums on the one tree, right?

[A]

Yep. It was supposed to have four, but only two of them really thrived. So I have half a tree of shiro plum, so that one's always massively productive. And then half a tree of Santa Rosa plums. And some years we get, like, five. Once in a while, we get a good crop.

[C]

Yeah, they're not all ripe at the same time, which is part of the tricky thing with the Santa Rosas.

[A]

Yeah, you have to pick a few every couple days, and they go from, like, hard and not good to splat on the ground, like, unbelievably fast.

[C]

Do you have a strategy for collecting them in such a way to, like, save them to have enough for jam?

[A]

For jam. I do try to pick them when they're a little bit under ripe and let them ripe it on the counter. There's a reason you don't see them at the store. They don't ripen on the counter very well. And, yeah, definitely just trying to pick some of those squishy, messy, ripe ones that have the incredible flavor.

[C]

So you said you grew up partially in Hawaii. Are there any foods that you grew up with that you still make that, like, remind you of Hawaii?

[A]

Yes, for sure. I always think about that when I go to potlucks, because I really loved the potlucks that I grew up with in Hawaii with things like chicken, long rice and lumpia. Lots of delicious Filipino food and Hawaiian food. So I do like to make lomi salmon if I ever end up with a little bit of salted salmon. Or you can make salted salmon yourself too. It's kind of like salsa except it's mostly tomato, scallion and then salted salmon and onion. So that's really delicious, like a delicious favorite food. And then butter mochi or mochi cake. I have a recipe that I like to use and that's one of my favorite foods in general. But also it's gluten free. So I, if I ever need to make a dessert for people who are gluten free, that's high on my list.

[C]

That's high on our list. To add to the next edition of Joy of Cooking.

[A]

Oh, nice.

[C]

Yeah, you and I have talked a fair bit about meal planning because it's something we both do and you have like a different, I think you have a different strategy than I have and I just wanted to like, like draw you out about like what, how do you meal plan? What's your strategy?

[A]

Yeah, we were talking about it because I do really enjoy your meal planning newsletter and I have been cooking dinner for my family since I was like 12. It's, I guess it is something that I've always liked to do, but also like a skill that I've developed over many years. And now that I'm a parent of an 11 year old, it becomes more important because there's like managing the school schedules and two working parents. Thankfully my wife and I have worked out a system where I do almost all the cooking and she does almost all the dishes because I hate doing dishes.

[C]

Bless.

[A]

Yeah. But yeah, I have, I've kind of gotten it to a science now for our family, which is that I have a paper meal planner and I meal plan for the week on Fridays and make my shopping list and I also have to check the fridge. So before you make your meal plan, you have to clean out the fridge and you have to look at what you have in the fridge, look at what you have in on the cupboard shelves and whatnot, and then do your meal plan and then make your shopping list and then go grocery shopping. And for us it works really well to have it on paper. We have this magnetic notepad that sticks to the fridge because then if anyone's like, am I going to get my favorite food this week? They can just look at the meal plan or if they're hungry and they're like, what's for dinner? They can just look at the meal plan and they know what's for dinner. I feel like it's helped me so much to not feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants all the time. Make sure that I have the ingredients that I need to cook the meals. I put events on the meal planner, too. So if it's somebody's birthday or if there's going to be a late meeting at school or whatever, and we're not going to be home for dinner, I put those on the meal plan as well. And that way I can accommodate. Like, do we need a super quick meal tonight? Are we gonna cook something special for somebody's birthday? Yeah. I have hundreds, probably of strategies for meal planning, and I'm curious what questions you have, and I can share some of them.

[C]

Does your family have veto power? Like, if you put something on the meal plan and they're like, you know what? I'm just not feeling this. Does that ever happen?

[A]

They don't get veto power. But there's two things I do to try to make sure everybody gets something they like. Number one is that I ask my family before I start the meal plan, what do you want to eat this week? And they both say, food.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

My favorite secret. What kind of food? And they say, the good kind. And I'm like, okay. So there is always the option in our household to, if you don't like what's for dinner, take a bite, and then you can just make something else. Eat a bowl of cereal, have a piece of toast or whatever. And that's important because my kid is very picky. Yeah. Once in a while, actually, we have a bunch of strategies for this. One is that I think it's always good to have a subscription to a food magazine. My current one is Food and Wine, but I've had lots of different ones that I like. Like, I used to be obsessed with Sunset and Saveur has really good recipes sometimes. And I had Bon Appetit after Gourmet, which was one of my favorites. Like, closed, and they switched my subscription to Bon Appetit. That was, like, heartbreaking. But Bon Appetit also has some good columns, good recipes. So we have the food magazine where everyone in the family can read it and, like, bookmark a page of something that you want to cook. So that helps. My wife, who does not like to think about food, but if she sees a delicious recipe, she's like, make me that.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And then New York Times cooking as well. She'll send me a recipe like we did curry pumpkin noodle soup the other day. I was a little bit dubious actually from the description, but it was so good. It tasted like pumpkin laksa. It had like a smooth pumpkin background. And then I got these like long slurpee egg noodles from the Asian food store. Red curry flavor. So I would recommend that one.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

But yeah, that's another one where she'll get like the recipe of the day and send it to me and say, make this. My kid likes things that are really simple. So sometimes we put his favorite takeout on the menu or if we're going to eat something spicy or whatever that we know he won't like, we just get him. We live across the street from a whole bowl, so we give him money to go get a whole bowl and we eat what the adults want to eat.

[C]

I love hobo, to be honest. It's one of my most request. We usually go for lunch. It's one of my most requested lunches, though.

[D]

Yeah, it's a good work lunch.

[C]

And it's just so for listeners, whole bowl is just like a little bowl of rice. Brown rice, black beans and then toppings. So it's, you know, you. I think it comes with cheddar cheese, those black canned olives that are weird but good salsa. What else?

[A]

Cilantro, sour cream and tali sauce.

[D]

Yeah, you're forgetting the hot sauce bar.

[C]

Yeah. And they have a whole. A wide variety of hot sauces that you can add to your. To your bowl. So that's. That is a favorite.

[D]

Yeah, they're. They're like the spiritual inheritor of honking huge burrito, which was very important to me. And it's. Our producer Dirk is laughing in a knowing way. But yeah. Honkin huge burrito rip. Wonderful.

[C]

And they were, they were honking huge. I don't know. I know nothing about this other than they were honking.

[D]

They were honking huge.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think one thing you do with your meal plan that I need to be better at is thinking about what my plans are that night.

[C]

I'm.

[B]

Sometimes I get way ahead of myself and I'm like, I'm gonna make this great meal on this night. And I'm like, wait, I'm not home until 7:30. What am I doing? Writing it down makes a lot of sense to me. That's not something I do. I'll probably. I use Megan's like whiteboard kind of based idea. Well, you do paper, but I put it on a whiteboard. But I think I need an events category too. Or some way to remind myself like maybe you shouldn't be making, you know, a four course meal on a Wednesday.

[C]

Right.

[B]

That's silly.

[A]

And then two more strategies that I think are important are that usually I have a leftovers or foraging day like Wednesday or Thursday.

[B]

And then foraging day makes it sound like an adventure.

[A]

Yeah, foraging does sound better than leftovers. Right. You can also, it's inspires you to recombine what would be in the fridge in a new way. And then the meals that are late in the week, like Thursday or Friday would be a pantry meal where if I don't get to it, it just stays in the freezer or whatever stays on the shelf. And I'm not going to waste food. I plan to do the most perishable stuff on Monday. So if I have like something with strawberries, we're eating it on Monday.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And then Fridays we like to have a little bit celebratory. So Fridays I usually make pizza. And I have two go to pizza recipes. I know you all have talked about pizza before and there are probably many go to pizza recipes in the archives. But my two are if I'm on top of it and planning ahead and having a good day and in control of everything, then I make the King Arthur flour crispy cheesy pan pizza recipe. I've like tweaked and customized it a little bit so that it's like our family's favorite pizza. It's like three inches and like imagine like the puffy, squishy focaccia texture with some like melty cheese, some crispy cheese. It's really good. And then I have a recipe from Serious Eats for crispy bar style pizza that literally takes five minutes. You can slap three of them on the table in the time it takes to boil a pot of water. So I recommend that one for emergency pizza.

[D]

Tortilla.

[A]

Tortilla pizza. Yeah. It's actually pretty good. It's better than frozen pizza. I've never had a kid refuse to eat it.

[C]

We should make that.

[D]

Yeah, no, I've, I've been intrigued. I've, I've seen it several times.

[C]

What's your family's favorite? Some of your favorite pizza toppings.

[A]

Okay, so my son will only eat plain cheese or cheese and pineapple.

[C]

Okay. Oh, wow.

[A]

Those are the only choice. Only two options.

[B]

Cheese and pineapple.

[A]

Not like, well, a tomato sauce. Tomato sauce, cheese and pineapple.

[B]

No cheese, Ham or anything.

[A]

No ham. And the cheese must be mozzarella. Only if there's parmesan it has to be hidden. It cannot be. Cannot be fresh it on top. He actually, we took him to Lovely's 50 50, and he was like, this pizza is terrible.

[C]

Oh, my gosh. No, I mean, I think if you're a kid, you can get away with saying stuff like that. It's fine.

[B]

Once he hits 15, he's not allowed to know.

[A]

He didn't like the delicious sourdough crust, and he did not like the plain cheese blend. So I was like, okay, we're never taking you out again.

[D]

I'm trying to think about what's different about the cheese blend.

[C]

Well, I know that Sarah uses, like, different cheeses. She does. I mean, mozzarella, but, like, some of them have, like, locally made hard cheeses and. And things like that.

[D]

If you just order a cheese pizza there, it seems like you would probably just get plain mozzarella, but I don't know.

[C]

Yeah, we'll have to ask Sarah.

[A]

But, yeah, my favorite's also pineapple pizza is one of my strategies, too, for the, like, incorporating any vegetable that you have left into your meal. So things like sauteed mushrooms are amazing. We invented a pizza a long time ago called beetsa, where you make roasted beets and slice them, or maybe you have leftover roasted beets. And then for the base, we make an herb pesto. So it could be anything that you have, but usually like parsley, arugula, oregano, any herbs that we have in the garden. And then we use the herb pesto for the base, and then the sliced beets and then toasted walnuts and crumbled feta. The. That was one of our use up the veggies. Pizza toppings.

[C]

That sounds great. I want to make pizza.

[D]

Just out of curiosity. So pineapple's a favorite of yours. Is that something that you actually encountered a lot in Hawaii or.

[A]

No, that's not how my family got into it. There's an apocryphal story. My older brother Steve worked at a pizza shop, and there was someone who kept calling in to order Hawaiian pizza or the pineapple pizza. And then they wouldn't pick it up. And then when the pizza shop put it in the trash, they would come take it from the trash. And so. And so the pizza shop caught on, and my brother started bringing home those pizzas instead of letting the, you know, the color come and get their free pizza. And so that's how my family got into Hawaiian pizza. And then I became vegetarian, and so I stopped eating the ham. So, yeah, that's how I got into Hawaiian pizza and pineapple pizza.

[C]

Wow.

[D]

I just remember, like, in the 1997 edition of Joy, it's actually called Seattle Pizza, which.

[C]

Yeah, I wondered about that.

[D]

Really confused about. And would like to. I would like to know more about the origin of the quote unquote, Hawaiian pizza.

[C]

Very mysterious pizza. To me. I'm. I'm okay with it. I don't understand Canadian bacon. I'm sorry to any Canadians who are.

[B]

Listening, but I don't.

[C]

It's. It's kind of just like. To me, it's just like ham.

[D]

It's ham that's made with pork loin.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Huh.

[C]

But anyway, I don't understand that. So it's not my favorite. I like Ken's Pizzeria in Portland, does a pineapple pizza with bacon. And to me, that is, like, more of what I would want.

[D]

Don't they not saute?

[C]

But, you know, like, they roast the pineapple.

[D]

They roast the pineapple, yeah. And with. With some of the bacon.

[C]

I think so. I think so.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah. That's a solid pineapple pizza.

[D]

But, yeah.

[C]

Jillian, you also brought a huge stack of cookbooks to this recording. Is that part of your strategy for thinking up ideas?

[A]

It really is. I am a lifelong cookbook reader, and so that's one of the ways that I get ideas of something that I want to make as well as I kind of. It's like an informal cookbook club. We don't meet on a regular basis, but I have a group of friends where when I read a good cookbook, I'm like, we need to get together and cook from this book and have a dinner party. So we do that once in a while. But, yeah, it's. I find this really great for not getting bored with eating the same thing all the time. So some of the cookbooks that I brought that I like are the Snowy Cabin Cookbook. Meals and Drinks for Adventurous Days and Cozy Nights. So this is one where if it's, you know, cold snows on the forecast, we want to look in this book and make something that's going to feel super cozy, like these soft pretzel braids with gooey gouda sauce. Although, really, oh, my gosh, Gosh, my kid will not. Will not eat the gouda. Of course, there's a recipe in here for buffalo cauliflower nachos. That's one of our favorites. So that's a good one. And then I really enjoyed Julia Tershin's what Goes with what pretty recent cookbook. This is really the way that I cook, which Is like, what do we have? And how can I throw it together in a formula that's going to end up with something that people want to eat? So she has a good sub stack and some of her. I love the illustrations, both her charts and her mom's illustrations, which are so cute. But yeah, I really recommend this one for, like, if you are a person who doesn't know how to or doesn't feel comfortable with, like, throwing together ingredients to make a meal, I feel like reading this could be a good way to learn how to, like, how do you know if throwing these ingredients together is going to taste good?

[B]

That's been on my list, but I.

[C]

Need to just go grab it. Yeah, that's a great one. I really like that one too.

[D]

Yeah, the. The matrices or whatever you want to call them. Yeah, the illustrations are really great and informative.

[C]

I also got to meet. I got to meet Julia the last time I went to New York, and she is a delightful human, I'm proud to report, and we would. We want to have her on the podcast at some point. But yeah, her books are great. Her recipes are really fun and they teach you more about, like, it's more about learning how to put things together than just following a recipe, which I really like because I think that it's easy to get stuck on just following a recipe forever and ever. So she's actually teaching you skills in this cookbook to do that. You know, we're big fans of Rombauer Vineyards. They're sponsoring today's episode, actually. But honestly, their wines are fantastic, with so many joy of cooking dishes. My current favorite is their Sauvignon Blanc with our Khao Soi Gai recipe. That bright, crisp wine cuts right through the richness of the curry. It's perfect.

[D]

Oh, absolutely. Being Oregonians, we take our pinots seriously. We're excited about their new Pinot Noir, which pairs beautifully with our chicken jambalaya. The wine has enough body to stand up to all those bold creole flavors.

[C]

If you want to try these pairings yourself, head to ronbauer.com joy or use code joypod all caps for 15% off. That's R O M B-A U E R.com/joy or code joypod all caps. Do you have a signature dish? Or, like, do you have dishes that you. That are in your repertoire that you make over and over and over, or do you like to try new things all the time?

[A]

I think my signature dish is salad, and I make it lots of different ways. And I actually highlighted a Recipe from Joy of Cooking that I wanted to share, which was your Becker salad recipe.

[C]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[A]

One of the things that I usually do is make salad dressing of the week because my wife won't eat store bought salad dressing. Like I grew up totally as a like ranch and Italian from a bottle family, but it was like a condition of entering my wife's family was that I had to learn her mom's recipes for homemade salad dressing. And I did. And it's easy now. And so yeah, I have actually a few amazing salad dressing recipes. Like your recipes are amazing. And your.

[C]

Thanks.

[A]

Your salad recipe says how you would just like, you know, sub in different ingredients or use a different dressing and change it up so that you're still eating salad, but it's not the same every time. And I think I've taken that to extremes. My friend group celebrates Passover in a pretty like informal, non religious way. But something that I always bring to Passover is the Dayenu salad. And Dayenu is like one of the songs from Passover. That means it would have been enough. And so what I do for that salad is I just go out in the garden in the early spring and I pick whatever I can find from my garden, maybe from friends gardens. And it seems like there's nothing out there, but it ends up being a bowl of salad. And I'm like, ah, it could have been enough.

[C]

I love that.

[A]

That's such a good tradition. Yeah. And it's like got all these bitter flavors and spicy flavors and different textures and stuff like that. So throughout the year I'm just like, what's in the fridge? How can I make it a salad? Does this need to be a wilted salad? Does this need to be a chopped salad? Does this salad need some dried fruit or nuts to complement it? And I always feel proud if I make a salad that's a combination I think no one has ever tried before.

[D]

Are you usually trying to make it into kind of a, a main dish type salad or is it more of a. More of an accompaniment type side dish?

[A]

Could be either, but usually just the vegetable side. Oh, and I wanted to say you were mentioning your radicchio salad.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I recently learned a secret about radicchio that I've been like questing for this secret for like decades, which is why do restaurant radicchio salads taste so good and the ones at home are inedibly bitter? It's because the bitter ingredient in radicchio is water soluble. And if you soak your radicchio for at Least an hour in cold water. Then it will be deliciously bitter instead of painfully bitter.

[B]

Yeah. I started soaking a lot of my greens for salads anyway. I think I saw it in the Via Carota, like salad, the famous one that's like piled high.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And you just like soak the. Just the green leaves and stuff in water for a long time too. And I found that that has like, changed my salad game in general for.

[C]

Both Rediki really mess things up.

[B]

Yeah. It makes such a huge difference. Of course, you have to think a little bit ahead.

[D]

Not that much.

[B]

Not as much as dry brining.

[D]

Yeah, for sure.

[C]

Yeah. I'll add a. I'll add a handful of ice cubes too. Sometimes I don't know if it's kind of a superstitious thing, but I'm like, well, if it's even colder water, that'll be even better. Or crisp.

[D]

Even crisper.

[C]

I don't know if that's true, but I like it.

[D]

I feel like we did that last night when we didn't even really have to. Like, we just. It's like, oh, yeah, let's just soak them. I feel like they're maybe I. We had cleaned them, cleaned some salad greens like a few days before. And it's just good for reviving.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

They weren't especially like wilted. It's just like, yeah, they're gonna be crisper.

[C]

Also do that with like anytime you have carrots in your crisper that get kind of, you know, womp. Womp Carrots. I couldn't think of the word for.

[B]

Like, but I pictured it.

[C]

You know what I mean? Limp carrots. You can just soak them in ice water and they usually will crisp right back up. So if you have, yeah, celery, anything that vegetables are, are watery, you put them in some water.

[D]

Just a side note about salad dressings and bottles and whatnot is I was cooking solo like one night this week and I was like, why do I always make salad dressing from scratch? I. I was just like, you know, for a second I was like, I need to, you know, give myself a break more and get some store bought salad dressing.

[C]

So just make a bigger batch, I guess.

[D]

I don't know. It's like we usually make a bigger batch, but then it just runs out too quickly.

[C]

There was some in the fridge, just FYI.

[D]

It was hidden.

[B]

Store bought one. Garlic expressions. Have you seen that one?

[C]

Oh, I've seen that, but I've never bought it.

[B]

It's actually pretty good.

[C]

Okay. But I love that you had to learn how to make salad dressing in order to enter the family was. So what's the. Is the family recipe a secret?

[A]

No, it's just like vinaigrette, but like vinaigrette made from your heart. But actually, the one that I think like this solidified our relationship was artichoke dip. So her family makes a dip for artichokes. My family was like mayonnaise. Our dip was best foods mayonnaise. But her family made this artichoke dip that I think might be like a relative of. Is it called Sas Gribiche?

[C]

Oh, yeah, Grubiche.

[A]

Grubiche. Okay. French.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

My nemesis.

[C]

Pronounce any of the letters.

[A]

Anyway, so it's like vinaigrette, kind of a basic vinaigrette with. With a bunch of chopped hard boiled eggs in it and a bunch of chopped herbs in it.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And it's very delicious as a dip for egg.

[C]

For artichokes and eggplant. No, I'm just kidding.

[A]

Sorry.

[C]

Is always on the break.

[A]

What isn't delicious with eggplant?

[C]

So each week we answer a caller question, and this week we're going to talk about the index in the Joy of Cooking. Dirk, can you please read the question?

[E]

I listen to your podcast several times a week. It's comforting, even on Repeat. I have three Joy of Cooking cookbooks, 1975, 1997, and 2019. I have a problem finding recipes when I search a specific recipe. Do you have any guidance on how to use the index?

[A]

Thanks, Pat.

[C]

First of all, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and it's really lovely to hear that you like listening to it on repeat. That makes my heart feel warm and fuzzy. I love it so much. John, I think you should take this one because you did a bunch of reading and research about the index and it's such.

[D]

You're.

[C]

I'm putting you on the spot, really selling.

[D]

It's a high bar that you're. You're setting here. It kind of feels like an elementary question, but it's legit, completely legit. I mean, it's. Sometimes it's hard to surface the exact recipe that you're looking for.

[C]

And in a book like Joy that's so huge, it's really key. Like having a good index is key.

[D]

Yeah, no, we, I mean, it, it's been a topic of conversation. Like, even, even Irma and Marian were like super, super duper concerned about the index. In fact, like the 1931 edition, the index was in the front of the book. I mean, Irma Definitely thought that the index was going to be how people found recipes. And she put it right next to the table of contents.

[C]

And it's sort of a. Something that you may not know is that a lot of cookbook authors, if they want a really good index for their book, end up paying out of their own pocket to hire a professional indexer to create the index, because otherwise you can end up with something that's really not super helpful or just full of holes. So it is a really important process and there are people who do it for a living. It's. It is a fascinating little world that I didn't know about until I got into this business.

[D]

It can make or break somebody's experience with a book. And it's. I mean, I don't want to go out and say thankless work, but I don't think it's acknowledged enough, like, what indexers do and how important it is. But yeah, just like, generally speaking, you know, if you're looking for a specific recipe that you've. You've seen before, like in the book, or you were just trying to surface it again. I mean, first of all, if it's like, if it has a distinctive. It's a distinctive dish with like a well established name, just that's the easiest one to find. You're going to find it, you know.

[C]

Alphabetically, just like, can you give an example of that?

[D]

Like cassoulet or sachertort or sonker. Sonker. Right. Brownies, whatever. There are plenty of recipes that are, like, much more like, I guess, nondescript or vague. Just kind of basic recipes that you know, where it's like a method and then an ingredient. So for those, especially for non baking recipes, you just want to look at, look up the main ingredient entry in the index and usually you'll find what you need listed underneath the main ingredient. If you can't find it that way, then go for the genre of the dish. So soup, stew, salad. You know, there will be index entries for those, those dish types. And then alphabetically underneath, you should be able to go through that list and find what you need. And then if that fails, look under the about section for that ingredient. Because the about sections work as, like, they will. They will introduce like a group of recipes organized by ingredient.

[C]

You see this a lot. Like, enjoy. You see that the about sections that we're referring to, like in the vegetables chapter, it'll be like about artichokes. And then at the bottom of the introduction, there are. I was about to say links. There are cross references to Other recipes, artichoke recipes in other parts of the book that aren't right there. So that, that's kind of like a, almost like a mini, mini index or a way to find things.

[D]

Yeah, a tiny, tiny little index where it's like, you know, the recipes that, you know where it. It that let's say artichokes is the main ingredient. Those are right underneath about artichokes. But then, yeah, you will have like links to artichoke dip like that are.

[C]

In the appetizers chapter.

[D]

In the appetizers chapter and whatnot. So that's another way to, to find what you're looking for if it's not like super duper obvious. And then for baking recipes, you really want to kind of flip the order there where you want to look underneath the type of dish, like pie, cake, cake, bread.

[C]

And there are subsections too. Like chocolate cakes has its own section in the index. But if you just look up cake and then under that chocolate, it will tell you, oh, actually you need to look under chocolate cakes for, for this subject.

[D]

I feel like in that particular instance it's like both. But yeah, so I would just go with the genre of the, of the dish first. And then if that fails, then look under the ingredient for the baking recipe.

[C]

I was looking up some recipes in the index just for, to see what I could see. And for example, I looked for cornbread. And you can find it under just cornbread, but you can also find it under breads. And then it was like a subsection, quick breads and then cornbread. Which I looked at that and I was like, I don't know if that's the most helpful because I don't know if people think are thinking of cornbread as a quick bread per se, but it was relatively easy to find even so. So that might be something we re examine for the next edition. Because I don't know if like we should link, not link, we should cross reference to the quick bread section in the index, but maybe we don't have a bunch of stuff nested under it. You know what I mean?

[D]

Yeah, you know, I mean, the turnaround that most authors get on, I can't speak for most authors, but in our case, the turnaround time from when we got a draft of the index to like when we had to approve it and return it, it was like a few business days.

[C]

Oh, my God. Yeah, it was. I remember we were pushing it.

[D]

Yeah, like one of our editors, Mara Stets, she had her eyes on it. We had our eyes on it. Everybody was trying to frantically like, scan the index to make sure everything was right. And I really wish that we could have more time.

[C]

Maybe we will this time.

[D]

Yeah. Scribner, if you're listening, we would like more time the index.

[C]

I think we need to meet our deadlines and then we'll have more time.

[D]

We did.

[C]

There's another thing I wanted to say about the index is that we also included an index entry for classic joy recipes. And these are recipes that have been in the book since 1936. So you can just look under classic recipes in the index and a list of them is right there that's on actually on page 1099. And then we also have cuisine specific index entries. So if you wanted to look up all the Russian recipes. Enjoy. You can look up Russian in the index and all of them will be listed there.

[D]

Yeah, it's like not really speaking to the reader's question, looking at. For specific recipes, but if you have kind of a vaguer criteria for what you're looking for. Yeah, you know, there's obviously by ingredient, by type recipe type, by cuisine, the classic recipes and then dietary needs. So there is an entry for, you know, gluten free and we'll have like the recipes we have that are gluten free. Other dietary needs, like vegan and vegetarian recipes. That's a little bit more difficult because there are so many recipes in the book that are either vegetarian or ve. Vegan, but they don't necessarily have that in the title. So an indexer's job is much harder for that. And plus, like, what are you going to.

[C]

That would take up so much space.

[D]

Yeah, you're going to put like every.

[C]

Vegetable, 400 vegetarian recipes in the index.

[B]

Add like 50 pages.

[D]

But yeah, so there's another chapter in the book that's entertaining and menus and in the past, like er and Marian, you know, they really used like the menu section to really like set the table and like, how do I put this? They wanted to give people like, inspiration for like, what to serve with what. And we do have some of that. But one of the things that we really tried to do in addition was to create like very focused, curated indexes for specific subjects where it's more of an associational grouping. So for instance, like vegan recipes we have by chapter, kind of it's what there's.

[C]

Or by type.

[D]

By type. So like breakfast recipes, soups.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Salads, et cetera. So yeah, we try to curate mini indexes for vegan and vegetarian recipes as.

[C]

Well as also in the Entertaining and menus chapter. There's like a list of author favorites which are just our favorite recipes from the book and they're broken down by a category. So like appetizers, soups, desserts, breads, stuff like that. So if you want to know what we think the best recipes are, that's where you can look. And then of course there's stuff like, you know, Thanksgiving menus and things like that. But it can be helpful to look in that chapter to kind of narrow things down if you're just not sure, sure what you might want. But yeah, if you, if you already know what you're looking for, you should go to the index Index. Shannon, do you have any thoughts about indexes from your experience using Joy? Anything you've noticed?

[B]

I love indexes so much and now I really want to talk to an indexer. I didn't know that was a thing and I'm obsessed. But what I like to do also is if I have like a lot of eggplant, for example, that I'm trying to get through, I like to go to the indexes of different cookbooks and just get a sense of what like, then I have a better idea of what flavor profile I might be going for or like what I'm actually in the mood for. The indexes in my cookbooks are used often and I think that it's really nice to see like, oh, there's like a miso eggplant recipe in Joy. Oh, there's also one in this other book that I really love. What are the like things that they have in common? What are the differences? What do I want to try? That's kind of new. So I use that a lot to compare recipes between cookbooks themselves.

[D]

Else this is another opportunity for me to plug eat your books. It's a wonderful website. It's a wonderful service. You just enter the books that you have and then, you know, it basically functions as like a meta index and they're tagging recipes with main ingredients for like eggplant and. God, we have to stop this.

[B]

We'll pick a different vegetable after the first year of this podcast.

[C]

That's right.

[D]

Yeah. Our one year anniversary is coming up and the second year we, we will.

[C]

We'll talk about something other than eggplant.

[D]

Another ingredient promise.

[E]

Oh, hello. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about an easy way to enhance your meals. Whether they are a healthy vegan grain bowl or that late night snack we'll pretend didn't happen the next day. And that easy way is Marshall's Haute Sauce. For 15 years, chef and cookbook author Sarah Marshall has been hand making and bottling these delicious sauces. She works directly with local farmers and highlights the lovely flavors of fresh seasonal produce. They're gluten free. There are no additives, dyes, waxes or binders. And they have mouth watering combinations like serrano ginger, lemongrass or habanero carrot curry or even whiskey smoked ghost which was featured on Hot Ones. So head on over to marshallshotsauce.com that's Marshalls H A U T E S a u c e.com and see all the available sauces and spice blends. Oh, that's right. Sarah's created spice packets by dehydrating and freeze drying actual produce so you can impart flavor to your food with more vegetables. But that's a story for another day. Find all of these delicious creations@marshallshot sauce.com and enter Haute Joy. That's one word, capital H A U T E capital J O Y. One word at checkout for 20% off. That's haute joy at checkout for 20% off. Off. And now back to the show.

[C]

We couldn't think of a recipe to assign this week that has anything to do with the index except for the fact that they're all in the index. So we thought more about how this, this podcast episode will air the week before Thanksgiving. And so one of our favorite Thanksgiving sides. That doesn't sound like you would want. I mean I, it's not, doesn't sound sexy. But if you like cabbage, it's really good.

[B]

Cabbage is sexy.

[C]

I, I mean I love cabbage. It's the cabbage gratin on page 225. It's a fantastic. Okay.

[B]

I've made that recipe like three times. It's so good.

[C]

So good.

[B]

It's I mouth wateringly good.

[C]

Yeah, like, so you saute a leek. If you don't have a leek, don't worry about it. Just use an onion instead or a shallot or whatever allium you want.

[D]

That's unacceptable only.

[B]

Oh, maybe that's our new vegetable.

[D]

That's certainly a candidate.

[C]

We should definitely. And then you add cabbage, shredded cabbage to that, saute that a little bit and then you mix that into kind of a custard base. So it's like a couple eggs, a cup of maybe a half cup, I can't remember, some cream or milk, a little bit of cheese. The recipe calls for Swiss or Emmental, I think, or Gruyere, but if you don't have those like any Melty cheese is totally fine.

[D]

There's a little flour in there too.

[C]

Yeah, there's a little bit of flour to help thicken. I would recommend not using mozzarella just because I feel like you want something with just a little bit of, of like bite to it. So like a cheddar or a young gouda or something would be really good.

[B]

Really good in it, though.

[C]

Yeah, Gruyere is great. I wish it, it weren't as expensive as it is, but yeah. If you, if you make this recipe, please let us know what you think. It's fantastic. You bake it in the oven after doing all that and it gets nice and crusty and brown on top and the cheese is all melty. So it's a really great Thanksgiving side and it's not super common to find. So definitely tag us at the Joy of Cooking if you make the cabbage gratin Recipe on page 225. If you have a cooking question or joy story to share, call our hotline at 503-395-8858. Leave us a message or send us a text. We'd love to hear from you, Dirk. Can you please read or play next week's caller question?

[E]

I just bought a stupid expensive bottle of black currant vinegar. I haven't tried it, but I love black currant. I plan to use it occasionally on a green salad and in seltzers as a shrub. Can you think of any other ways to deploy it?

[C]

Maggie and pdx, thanks for that question, Maggie. We're looking forward to answering that next week. And thanks for listening to the pod.

[D]

It sounds like an excuse to buy a stupid expensive bottle of current vinegar.

[C]

Black currant vinegar. Sure.

[D]

It's research.

[C]

Maggie, you're going to need to tell us where you bought your black currant vinegar. Thanks. What's everybody cooking and planning on eating this week?

[A]

Well, I have a bag of frozen perogies that I've been waiting to put on the menu and I'm going to make gratin cabbage that you just recommended.

[C]

That would be.

[A]

And serve it with the pierogies.

[B]

Oh my gosh. Yum.

[C]

Yeah, that would go really well together. I want pierogies. I know.

[B]

I always want peries.

[C]

Well, we're going to North Carolina this week. My sister's getting married, so that's really exciting. And there's a handful of things I always try to eat when I go back to North Carolina. One is pulled pork barbecue. There's like decent barbecue in Portland, but I don't think that anybody truly gets North Carolina style pulled pork barbecue. So that's.

[D]

Can we. Can we drive to Lexington, please?

[C]

Sure, yeah. We can go wherever.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

We'll do barbecue. We'll go to. There's this little. It's not even calling it a restaurant is maybe glorifying it too much. It's this little roadside place where you can get. You can get barbecue there, but hot dogs are what you go for. It's called pulling. It's been there for over 100 years. I think it's very old. It's been there forever. And North Carolina style hot dogs are served with, like, a ground meat. It's like chili without any beans or anything else. It's just mostly like spiced meat and then raw onions, which is a hard no for me, but I can. I respect it. And then like a finely chopped coleslaw. So like a. It has mayonnaise, but it's very light. It's not, like, gloppy. It's just. Just enough to coat everything. So that's the North. Our producer is like.

[B]

He's like, grimacing.

[C]

But there. So there's those hot dogs. And then we'll also go to Waffle House, or Waho, as I like to call it. But you gotta go to the Waffle House when you're in the south. And if it's closed, run as fast as you can away. Yeah. Something bad is happening.

[D]

And I guess tonight it's either gonna be hot pot or biryani. Weird.

[C]

It's up to you. Because I'm. I'm tired. I'm not cooking. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'll eat whatever you make.

[D]

Okay.

[B]

I'm heading up to Seattle for a short work trip, and one of the things I love doing is just ordering in sushi and sitting in the hotel bed and watching hotel TV and eating sushi.

[C]

That is a very special delicacy.

[B]

It's just the best.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

That's all I want to do.

[C]

Thanks for listening to the Joy of Cooking podcast. Before we go, show some love for your favorite podcast by subscribing to the show and leaving us a review. Follow us at joyofcooking.substack.com and on Instagram at the Joy of Cooking. Stay tuned for next week where we'll talk about how to use black currant vinegar. And don't forget to make this week's recipe, cabbage Gratin, on page 225. Call in with questions, hopes, history, or where you find joy in the kitchen. Our number is 503-395-885. 8. That's 503-395-8858.

[B]

And we could not do this without our fantastic team at the Joy of Creation Production House. Thank you to Dave Dresky, our production coordinator, Hayley Bowers, our audio engineer, and Dirk Marshall, our producer.

[F]

If you love the stories we bring you each week, please consider supporting us on Patreon. As an independent media company, your support is absolutely essential. It allows us to continue creating high quality professional episodes that amplify the voices of women, small business owners, writers, artists and creatives and keep their stories free from commercial pressure. By becoming a Patreon member, you're not just supporting us, you're investing in the future of independent Media. Please visit patreon.com thejoyofcreationproductionhouse to join our community today.

[C]

Thank you.

[F]

Thank you for listening and supporting our podcast Dreams.