Book Tour 1: Do You Really Need That Many Recipe Tests? (2024)

Dan Pashman: This episode contains explicit language.

Andy Richter: Here we go. This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I’m Andy Richter.

Claire Saffitz: I’m Claire Saffitz.

Sam Sanders: I’m Sam Sanders.

Lindy West: I’m Lindy West.

Pati Jinich: I’m Pati Jinich. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. And tonight, we're coming to you live from Miracle Theater in Washington, D.C.!

Kae Lani Palmisano: From WHYY in Philadelphia!

Kim Severson: From The Loft in Atlanta!

Ann Kim: From Amsterdam Hall in St. Paul Minnesota!

Lindy West: From the Fremont Abbey in Seattle!

[APPLAUSE]

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: For about six weeks this spring, I zigzagged across the country, doing the biggest tour of live shows in Sporkful history! I went to ten cities in celebration of the release of my first cookbook, Anything’s Pastable. Each event was held in a small theater with a few hundred enthusiastic Sporkful listeners. And if you were at one of these shows, thank you for coming out, it was great to see you!

Dan Pashman: Now these shows were different from regular Sporkful episodes because I gave up the hosting chair. At every taping, I talked with a different guest host, and they interviewed me. In places where my cookbook collaborators were based, they joined me on stage too, and each show included Q&A with the audience. So this week and next, we’re bringing you the best moments from those live shows.

Dan Pashman: Now we did a four-part series about the making of Anything’s Pastable a few months ago. If you haven’t listened to that, I suggest you start there. It will totally change the way you look at cookbooks. That said, we’re not gonna rehash the series in today’s show or next week — instead, we’re gonna hear many of the follow-up questions I got about the book. And I’ll respond to the many questions I got about my opinions on a range of pressing food issues. Because if there’s one thing that became clear [LAUGHS] as the tour went on, it’s that people love to share their own food hot takes, and argue with me about mine. So there’s a lot of that. In other words, we’ve got some ground to cover. So let’s get into it.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: It all began, as so many things on the Sporkful do, with pasta shapes. We kicked off the tour in New York City with Claire Saffitz, YouTube star and author of Dessert Person and What’s For Dessert. And Claire showed up with a strong stance of her own …

Claire Saffitz: I do think that farfalle makes no sense.

Dan Pashman: Farfalle sucks. Yes, bowties?

Claire Saffitz: Yes, farfalle does suck.

Dan Pashman: It's like it was engineered not to pick up sauce.

Claire Saffitz: It makes no sense, but it also feels — like, did you eat a lot of farfalle when you were a kid? I feel like my mom always was making farfalle, and it was always like overcooked and then undercooked also.

Dan Pashman: Yes.

Claire Saffitz: Didn't make any sense.

Dan Pashman: Right, in the knot of the bowtie.

Claire Saffitz: Right.

Dan Pashman: But, which is worse, bowties or wagon wheels?

Claire Saffitz: Oh. I mean, is wagon wheel a pasta for anyone other than small children? Is that a thing?

Dan Pashman: Some people — by applause, which is worse, bowties or wagon wheels? Whichever one you vote for is the one you're saying is worse. All right? So by applause, who thinks bow ties are worse?

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]

Dan Pashman: Okay, who thinks wagon wheels are worse?

[AUDIENCE SCREAMS AND APPLAUDS LOUDER]

Dan Pashman: You know, it's funny. Always, one side always has the screamers ...

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

Claire Saffitz: Right.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Claire Saffitz: I guess, I literally didn't even know that people ate wagon wheel pasta. Can you buy that? I didn't even know.

Dan Pashman: You can — look, wagon wheels were invented in the 1930s by Benedetto Cavalieri ...

Claire Saffitz: Wow.

Dan Pashman: Who has — his pasta company exists to this day, it's made in Italy, and when it was made — this is how f*cked up this shape is — [LAUGHING] when it was made a hundred years ago, people were like, but Signore Cavalieri, this shape cooks unevenly. It has hard bits and soft bits, and he said, but don't you see that's the point of it. It has different textures. Like, what the f*ck?

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: You know? And I actually, in my research for this book, ordered Benedetto Cavalieri brand wagon wheels, which cost $15 for a pound. And it was like eating pasta mixed with uncooked rice. It was terrible.

Claire Saffitz: But in the name of research.

Dan Pashman: Yes, research.

Claire Saffitz: So I admire that you did that.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Claire and I are on the same team when it comes to farfalle and wagon wheels. But once I got to Boston, I had to go on the defensive. I talked with Dan Souza, editor-in-chief of Cook’s Illustrated magazine, star of the America’s Test Kitchen web series What’s Eating Dan, and renowned food science nerd.

Dan Pashman: Now you know how I feel about spaghetti — I think it sucks. There’s either too much or too little on your fork, there are always a few dangling noodles that get sauce all over your face, and it's almost impossible to get the perfect sauce to pasta ratio in a single forkful. These are design flaws. But Dan Souza? He’ll go to bat for spaghetti.

Dan Souza: Where it comes down to me is, I feel like spaghetti, yes, it takes a a little bit of skill and a little bit of, like, effort to get that perfect bite on there. But when you get it, it’s more satisfying.

Dan Pashman: I guess you and I just find satisfaction in different things.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: To me, like, after having cooked the spaghetti and cooked the sauce and plated it, like, that was enough work.

Dan Souza: Okay, got ya. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Pashman: Now I wanna just eat.

Dan Souza: Now you just want to eat.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Dan Souza: You just want to get it in your mouth.

Dan Pashman: But I hear what you're saying, like, there's an artistry — I mean, are you a spoon assist guy?

Dan Souza: No.

Dan Pashman: Really?

Dan Souza: Yeah, I just go ...

Dan Pashman: So you're getting ... You're consistently getting great bites of spaghetti without a spoon assist?

Dan Souza: Yeah, yeah. I mean ... [LAUGHING] not every time. You know, not every time, but I think I'm pretty good at spaghetti.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Dan Souza: Yeah, I think I'm pretty good at it.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Dan Souza: But no, so ... So that was my entry point when you were like — you're making this new pasta shape, you hate spaghetti, and I'm like, "Where is this going?" And so your cascatelli came out, and you were kind enough to send me a box. And I was like, "This pasta ...", you know, I was like, no, I'm not gonna like this. And I boiled it up, and I did it really simply. I just did it with like some olive oil and parmesan and whatnot. And I ate it, and I really, really liked it, and that really annoyed me.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Souza: It's really, really good pasta. And what I think is so smart about it is you have — you have that bucatini effect, and you have the ruffles from the mafaldini, and these angular shapes, and it really is so toothy, like it's so satisfying to chew on. And I've since done so many things with it, and I was doing weird stuff with it before your book came out, and your book has just given me even more weird ideas, so you have actually changed my connection to pasta.

Dan Pashman: Well, thank you. I mean, that's a great ...

[APPLAUSE]

Dan Souza: Begrudgingly …

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

[APPLAUSE]

Dan Pashman: Spaghetti, and one of my favorite alternatives to spaghetti, also worked their way into the conversation in Seattle, where I talked with author, podcaster, TV writer, and comedian Lindy West. As I told her …

Dan Pashman: Spaghetti is like the oldest shape, and it was the first shape to be industrialized, and so it kind of like ... It sort of just got its hooks into the firmament, into the popular culture, into our imagination, and The Lady and the Tramp and all this, and it just ... It's just cheap and easy to make. But because of all those same things, it's very primitive. You know, it's like, we're not all still driving around in model Ts. So why are we eating spaghetti?

[LAUGHING]

Lindy West: So true. Okay, you're a pasta expert. One time, I had a spaghetti that was kind of square, and I can't — it was so good, and I can't find it again, and …

Dan Pashman: It was long?

Lindy West: It was long, and it was maybe not square, but it was maybe like, um, X-shaped, or it — what was that?

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: It may have been square — so if it was square, that was spaghetti alla chitarra. Chitarra is Italian for guitar.

Lindy West: Oh!

Dan Pashman: And that pasta, it's like as if you took a flat sheet of lasagna and pressed it through guitar strings.

Lindy West: Yeah, yeah.

Dan Pashman: So you would get strands that were all squared at the edges. So that's a fun shape. I think they call it tonarelli in Rome.

Lindy West: Okay.

Dan Pashman: But it's the same. It's, like, basically the same shape. I'm guessing that's probably what it was.

Lindy West: It probably is what it was, and it was really good, and you should all try to find it.

Dan Pashman: It’s a fun one.

Lindy West: It just ... It really, like, holds the sauce better than a regular spaghetti.

Dan Pashman: Well, it has more surface area. A square has more surface area than a circle.

Lindy West: Oh. Huh.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: It has a higher surface area to volume ratio. A circle or a sphere is the lowest surface area to volume ratio of any shape. So as soon as you turn it from a circle to a square, you getting more surface area in relation to volume, so more surface area to hold sauce.

Lindy West: So why are we held prisoner by these round noodles?

Dan Pashman: That's what I'm saying!

[LAUGHING AND APPLAUSE]

Lindy West: Ridiculous!

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Now we didn’t spend every minute of the show talking about pasta shapes — though we probably could have. In our series on Anything’s Pastable, we spent a lot of time digging into the process of making a cookbook. As it turns out, a lot of the hosts at our shows heard all these details, and had follow-up questions. They wanted to know more. In San Francisco, I talked with Sam Sanders, one of the hosts of the podcast Vibe Check, and before that, he spent 12 years at NPR.

Sam Sanders: I've interviewed chefs before. I've talked about cookbooks before. But I've never listened to a podcast series explain how a cookbook is made. Who here has heard those episodes of The Sporkful? [APPLAUSE] Isn't it great? Also, it just, like, totally changed the way I think about cookbooks. Because in my mind, it's like, all right, someone writes a cookbook, they have the recipe they've been making forever, and they write it down. [LAUGHING] And then someone takes a picture. Come to find out, there's a whole team involved, there's recipe testing, you've tried some of these things more than a dozen times. Which recipe, and I'm speaking about like frequency of retesting, was the hardest from this cookbook?

Dan Pashman: I mean, probably there's this one for Cavatelli with artichokes and preserved lemon. Like, that one was just — you know, every little detail — you know, every detail had to be considered. How much preserved lemon? How long — how many cans of artichokes? How much to — how long to roast them for? But then it’s also — the part that I really agonized over was the writing of the instructions.

Sam Sanders: Why?

Dan Pashman: Because you’re trying to anticipate every single possible way that someone could go wrong.

Sam Sanders: Someone is me.

[LAUGHING]

Sam Sanders: I will go wrong.

Dan Pashman: You, and a million other people. Like every person in this room and every person who buys the book ...

Sam Sanders: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Because, you know, people have different levels of expertise. You have different cooking equipment. You have different lighting in your kitchen. So if I tell you to cook something to golden brown, like that's not exactly the same for everyone.

Sam Sanders: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: And those are the kinds of like wording choices that I agonize over.

Dan Pashman: One recipe that I really agonized over while writing was spaghetti all'assassina. That’s assasin's spaghetti. It's spaghetti in a spicy tomato sauce that you pan fry until the pasta turns charred and crispy and crunchy. It’s really, really good. But if you're not careful, all that charring can wreak havoc on your cookware. So when I put this recipe to the book, I made sure to include a note about the importance of using a nonstick pan. At our New York show, host Claire Saffitz told me she tried out that recipe, and …

Claire Saffitz: I will say, do listen to the note in the recipe that calls for a nonstick pan. I did make that mistake.

Dan Pashman: Oh, so did you not see my ...

Claire Saffitz: Even though you made that mistake. I know, I did.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Yeah.

Claire Saffitz: I listened to all four parts of the podcast that talks about the making of the book. So I listened to Dan make that same mistake, and then I was like, "I'm sure it'll be fine," but it wasn't fine.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: Claire pointed out that over the course of the book, with the assassina and other dishes, I went from never writing a recipe in my life to becoming extremely meticulous about the recipes I was creating.

Claire Saffitz: So I was thinking, like, did you really need to test the recipes that many times and would you do it differently if you had to do it again? Because, like, you give examples where you're like, okay, well, on test eight, there wasn't enough preserved lemon. But on test number nine, there was too much. And I'm like, well, can't you just split the difference And then … [LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: I mean ...

Claire Saffitz: Like, I guess talk about your approach.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] I, mean, you know, I'm sure that you, because you have a professional training and you, before you wrote your first cookbook, you had developed a lot. of recipes, so maybe if I get to the point in my career where I've developed as many recipes as you have, then I would have that confidence to say like, I know what this needs. I don't need to test it again.

Claire Saffitz: Right.

Dan Pashman: I guess I just didn't have that confidence. I needed to be sure that it was right. But then even after the recipe was finalized, I went and cooked It again and was like ... But maybe there should have been, like, one half of a teaspoon more preserved or less preserved lemon. So, do you do that too? Like, do you cook something later after it's been finalized and put it into print and then wonder if you should change it?

Claire Saffitz: All the time. All the time. And I think it's important to have an external — I mean you had a collaborative recipe development process, which I think is really interesting because, for me, writing cookbooks is very solitary. It's pretty much just me — and, like, my neighbors who like everything, so they're not that helpful when it comes to like, deciding [LAUGHING] like, is this the final version or something. But I'm always second guessing, and so, I do think you need to have someone, like maybe for you — I know, you had your kids and your wife were like eating all the tests.

Dan Pashman: Oh, my kids will eat any pasta. They’re not very good at this.

Claire Saffitz: But they're pretty tough, critics, also ...

Dan Pashman: That's true, yeah.

Claire Saffitz: From what I could hear. So I do think it's important to just call it at a certain point, because you could test a recipe hundreds of times.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Claire Saffitz: And always be changing something minor here and there. Because there's gonna be people like me who disregard the very first note of your recipe, like, I didn't use a nonstick pan. [DAN PASHMAN LAUGHS] And they're like, forgot an ingredient and they're substituting, so It's a little bit freeing at the same time. It's just like, people are gonna do what they're gonna do in their own kitchen. Sometimes you just shouldn't look at what happens to your recipes when they go out into the world. speaking from experience.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: So yes, there will always be people out there, like Claire, who won’t follow the notes I wrote so painstakingly. Still, I wanted to get these recipes right. And as I’ve said, I hadn’t written a recipe before starting on the book. That’s why I ended up hiring my team of recipe developers that Claire referenced, to help me out. But it still felt daunting. I talked about this feeling with Joanne Lee Molinaro in Chicago. She’s the author of The Korean Vegan Cookbook.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: One of the things that I recently heard you talk about was, the idea of imposter syndrome. I mean, how did you overcome that imposter syndrome? I definitely had it when I was writing my book to be an effective leader for this team you've pulled together?

Dan Pashman: Yeah, for sure. No, I was definitely, like early on, I was like, "Why ... Why is anyone going to want my recipes?", like, what do I know?

Joanne Lee Molinaro: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: Like, I'm working with these recipe developers who are all, like, trained — you know, all have culinary training, who know much more about cooking than I do. So we would come up with an idea. They would go off and cook it four or five times, so they thought it was great. Send me the recipe, and then I would cook it. And sometimes, I would have feedback. I'd be like, oh, I don't quite like this aspect of it, or this is confusing to me. This instruction is confusing, or I wish it had more of this. But I was like, "But can I say that to them?"

Joanne Lee Molinaro: Hmm.

Dan Pashman: Like, they're the professionals, shouldn't they know how it's supposed to be? I think I just — partly just as I tested more and more recipes, I sort of got more comfortable with the process and being in the kitchen and cooking. And then I got to a point where I was just like, I have two jobs for this book, and it's not really to like, write the details of the recipes. The jobs are I'm a home cook and this book is for home cooks. And so that's where I saw my value is like, I'm the stand-in for the home cooks. And the other thing was just that I had to bring to it was that like infuse the book with my perspective. That's what I'm bringing, is my taste. In creative communities, people don't talk about taste. But your taste is, like, the most important thing. Like when you're young and you have a lot of ideas that you — and if you are going to end up being creative and successful in a creative field, then you have to have good taste. What you don't have is the ability to turn … Like you know what's good, you just don't know how to make good things yet. And so you have to learn how to make things that are as good as the ideas in your head, so that you are sort of, like, living up to your own taste. And so it's like my personality, my perspective on food, my taste, what I like, what I think is good, that's my job is to put that in the book. And so, that gave me confidence to be like, I can tell them that I want to change it.

Dan Pashman: Over the course of writing my cookbook, I did gain confidence. But still, there’s one group of people who may always doubt me. At multiple tour stops, folks had the same question …

Kim Severson: But the Italians …

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Kim Severson: How do they feel?

Andy Richter: I mean, Italians are famously opinionated about like, you got to do it this way.

Audience Member: What do the Italians make of this book?

Dan Pashman: As Joanne put it to me in Chicago …

Joanne Lee Molinaro: I was wondering if you told somebody in Italy while you were out there, "Hey, I'm making a kimchi carbonara ..." [LAUGHING], like, what would the reaction have been?

Dan Pashman: Yeah, probably a lot of confusion. I mean, they're — as it is, they don't like the idea that an American came up with an idea for a pasta shape.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: Right.

Dan Pashman: So, I had lost credibility with them before I even said the word kimchi.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: Okay.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: But, no, I mean, look, I did a research trip across Italy for this cookbook. And my big takeaway from that trip was that pasta was not the national food of Italy until about a hundred years ago. Italy wasn't even a country until 150 years ago, okay?

Joanne Lee Molinaro: That was new to me too, yeah.

Dan Pashman: Yes. I mean, and it’s still very hyper regional. It's sort of a ... it's sort of a motley crew of regions that were unified into a country 150 years ago, and soon after that, the fascists came to power, and they wanted to unite them under a nationalist identity, and they decided pasta would be a big part of that. So there's all this fascist propaganda from the era, the 1920s and '30s, of pasta being the true Italian food. And they also did that because it's cheap, they needed to feed the masses, and they started building pasta factories in parts of Italy where there were none before. So that was how pasta spread across the country and became the national food of Italy. I love the history. I love the culture and the romance of Italian food. But there is also a lot of mythology built up in it. It's not as old as you think, but it's also not as static. And to me, that's very exciting. That actually Italian food is dynamic and pasta culture is changing. And carbonara is relatively new, and spaghetti all’asassina, assassin's spaghetti was invented in a restaurant in 1960, in Bari. And new versions are coming out in Bari right now, like in the last few years, as it's gotten more popular. So I kind of, like, started off this project thinking that I'm kind of like kicking down the door of Italian food but it actually made me more excited to think of the book instead as my contribution to what is this ongoing and never ending evolution of pasta.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: I think that’s beautiful. And I think that that story happens in so many different cultures where you think that this is the traditional way to make it but then you peel back a couple layers and you realize, no, you’re supposed to add red beans and you know potatoes and pineapples to this thing [Dan Pashman: Right.] that is otherwise supposed to be savory.

Dan Pashman: Well like, I mean I'm sure you know this, Joanne, but like kimchi wasn't always made with Napa cabbage.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: Exactly, yeah.

Dan Pashman: It wasn't always spicy. It used to be pale.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: It wasn't, yeah. It used to be white and not red.

Dan Pashman: Right, right.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Right, right.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: No fish sauce, just sea salt and, you know, whatever vegetable you had on hand.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Joanne Lee Molinaro: But that's sort of the beautiful thing about it is, you know, people continue to innovate around it and it's like a little piece of history.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: These questions of how I took inspiration from different cuisines in the book and what is "authentic" came up a lot across the tour. A number of our hosts have grappled with these questions in their own lives and work and have thoughts about what happens when culinary cultures merge.

Dan Pashman: In Minnesota, I talked about this with the chef Ann Kim. Ann has blended a range of different cuisines together at her Twin Cities restaurants, especially at her place Pizzeria Lola. On that menu, one of the pizzas has Korean barbecue short ribs and arugula. Another has kimchi and gochujang. She started off by asking me:

Ann Kim: How do you feel about authenticity and tradition in food?

Dan Pashman: The whole idea of authenticity is kind of bogus because you could go to two homes in Korea and across the street from each other and their kimchi recipes are going to be different.

Ann Kim: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: So I would never tell either one of the people in those houses that their kimchi is not authentic. You know, it's authentic to them.

Ann Kim: Yes.

Dan Pashman: To me, it's more about, like, having integrity. It’s like, being respectful of the tradition and the culture, not just sort of glopping trends together, but, like, thinking about what you're doing and understanding something about it. But you must have gotten a little bit of a pushback from Italian purists when you opened Pizzeria Lola?

Ann Kim: I mean for me, when I kind of stepped out of my lane, as they say, I think that's when people started to say, "Well, you’re Korean. You should be making traditional Korean food," But then to Koreans, I wasn't making traditional enough Korean food. But I'm also an immigrant, who's a Korean American, who moved here to Minnesota when I was five-years-old. And there weren't a lot of Koreans here and out of necessity, my mother had to make dishes to sort of improvise based on what she had. So what might be authentic to me growing up in Minnesota is a hundred percent different from somebody that would be raised in Seoul or Busan. And so who's to say that that kimchi dish, or that pasta dish isn't authentic? It's authentically who I am. When you have so many different cultures immigrating here, I call that progress and evolution.

Dan Pashman: In Washington, D.C., Pati Jinich and I got into similar themes, but about food from her native Mexico. Pati is a cookbook author and host of the award-winning PBS TV series Pati's Mexican Table. When she saw my recipe for smoked cheddar and chicken enchiladas, where instead of the filling being wrapped in corn tortillas, it’s stuffed into manicotti … Well, Pati had some thoughts.

Pati Jinich: I would have screamed like a madwoman 20 years ago, if I had seen pasta enchiladas in a cookbook. You have pasta enchiladas here that I'm like dying to try.

[LAUGHING]

Pati Jinich: And I think that the American palate and audience and, you know, mainstream everywhere, we've become so much more kind and open to try new things. I think there's still the policing of what is authentic and what is not authentic, and I think that that really harms the cuisines, the people. People have policed me on making Nutella tamales, and they're absolutely delicious, and I didn't ... [LAUGHING] I didn't come up with them. I was once in the city of Tucson, I think we talked about this, and this Mexican cook, who's very famous were making Nutella tamales, and I posted that on Instagram and people were going crazy. And I was like, okay, so Mexicans now are not allowed to eat Nutella. And I find that …

Dan Pashman: Who was going crazy?

Pati Jinich: People, like over the internet because you know like …

Dan Pashman: No, but I mean like was it Mexicans who were ...

Pati Jinich: No, no, no. It wasn't Mexicans. It was the non-Mexicans policing Mexican-ness and Mexican authenticity. But you find that many times the people policing are not the people ... [LAUGHING] That they're ... [LAUGHING] I feel like they put us on smaller squares. So I started thinking, you know, Mexicans love hamburgers. We love pizzas. We are obsessed with Italian food to no end. In your next research trip, you have to go to Mexico and eat Italian food in Mexico. It's insane. We kill the pasta. We just — you know, we — like, al dente does not exist. And it's fabulous. It's an absolutely delicious mess. It's like, not an assassin, it's like a criminal pasta. [LAUGHING] But I find your book, in that regards, to be so inspiring, and just opening — I think what should be happening in the world today, you know, trying all things, testing all things, trying new challenges, putting flavors together, and being open. While at the same time, you give credit to every person and every place you go to, to every recipe, you give due credit, you pass on traditions, and at the same time, you make space for new things.

[APPLAUSE]

Dan Pashman: In Philadelphia, I spoke with Kae Lani Palmisano. She’s the host of the WHYY TV show Check, Please Philly. She’s also the food editor of Philly Magazine. And Kae Lani asked the big question, the one that brought it all together.

[APPLAUSE]

Kae Lani Palmisano: If there’s one big lesson that we've learned tonight from this talk and from your cookbook, it's that food is constantly changing. It's always evolving. So, what is this cookbook saying about American food here and now?

Dan Pashman: Oh. I guess I would say, as our food culture becomes more diverse, and more different ingredients work their way into the mainstream, I think that this is just a natural next step in that process. And people tend to think that new ideas in food come from fancy chefs, but in reality, I think most new ideas in food come from home cooks, who just end up with a couple of random things in their pantry and decide to put them together. You know, I was worried when I put chili crisp on the cover of my cookbook that it might be not something everyone would recognize. And then, a month before the book came out, we went to Cheesecake Factory at the mall, and they have a chili crisp pasta dish!

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: At Cheesecake Factory! And I was like, now it's — You know, now, I'm not — It's not so revolutionary. Now, it's everywhere. Like, that tells you something. And so if this book is one teeny tiny contribution to that process and pushes that forward, then I'll be very happy.

[APPLAUSE]

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Coming up, several of the hosts subject me to lightning rounds. So we’ll have a lightning round of lightning rounds. Things will get a little silly, and a little saucy.

CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Lindy, you're blushing.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: Stick around.

MUSIC

+++ BREAK +++

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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. Hey, if you want to see what these live shows you’re listening to looked like, there are photos and videos from the events on my Instagram. If you check out my highlights, you can also find pics of where I ate while I was on tour, and you can get some recipes from Anything’s Pastable that have been released for free for you to sample. Find all that and follow me on Instagram @TheSporkful.

Dan Pashman: And if you’re listening to this episode and thinking you’d love to see The Sporkful live, well we’re doing a live taping in just a few weeks at Cookbook Fest in Napa. I’ll be talking with cookbook authors Khushbu Shah and Edy Massih. It’s part of a whole incredible weekend of food and drinks featuring chefs like Tyler Florence, cooking demos and book signings with many folks you’ve heard here on the show, live music and live podcast tapings, and more. I can’t wait for this. It’s gonna be amazing and delicious. So I hope to see you there.

Dan Pashman: We also just announced a live Sporkful taping in London in September! All this is another reason to follow me on Instagram to hear these exciting announcements. Details and ticket info for all our live events is at Sporkful.com/events.

Dan Pashman: Okay, back to the best of the book tour. We’ll get to the lightning round of lightning rounds soon. But now that I’ve written a cookbook, I’ve been getting a lot of questions not just about pasta shapes, but also about cooking pasta. At the San Francisco show, Sam Sanders had one that I haven’t gotten before.

Sam Sanders: I gotta ask you a really honest question ...

Dan Pashman: Okay.

Sam Sanders: And you have to give me a really honest answer.

Dan Pashman: All right, I’m ready.

Sam Sanders: I’m not a pasta expert, but I have gotten pretty good at the classic, quintessential, three-ingredient tomato sauce. We all know — can of tomatoes, half stick of butter ... full stick of butter [LAUGHING], and half an onion. Sometimes I add red wine and bacon grease.

Dan Pashman: Look at this guy!

Sam Sanders: Cause I'm crazy. But last week — and by honest, Is this right? Is this wrong? Do you hate me? Do you think less of me? Last week I got that sauce ready, and then I cooked my noodles in the sauce ‘cause I was lazy. [LAUGHING] I didn’t want another pot, and I was like, I can make this work.

Dan Pashman: I mean, how did it come out?

Sam Sanders: I had to add some water but it was fine.

Dan Pashman: Then it’s good.

Sam Sanders: But would you do it?

Dan Pashman: I probably wouldn't do it that way, no.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: As I listen back to my response to Sam’s question, I realize that ten years ago, I might have been a little more pointed in my response. Which brings me to something I got into in Los Angeles, with comedian Andy Richter. As Andy said, I’ve developed a bit of a reputation as someone who has some perhaps rigid opinions about food.

Andy Richter: There’s something that’s interesting to me about, like, sort of what you started doing, which is you know, like, very opinionated things about, like, where the cheese goes on a cheeseburger, or what the layers of a PB& J should be. You are, like, almost sort of doctrinaire about certain things. And then you do this book where you, where all rules are off. Like, do you see a conflict in that?

Dan Pashman: Yeah, I hear what you're saying.

Andy Richter: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: It's an interesting idea. I think partly it's that, as you get older, I think we all sort of, like, lose the hubris of youth. And so like, I think my general attitude now is less like, this is the one right way. And it's more like, here's how I really like it.

Andy Richter: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: And you don't have to like it, but I think it's really good.

Dan Pashman: Andy didn’t push me any harder with that answer. But not everyone was willing to let me off the hook so easily. In Atlanta, I spoke with New York Times food writer Kim Severson. Kim’s a veteran journalist, so she came equipped with hard hitting questions.

Kim Severson: You suggest that cheese should be on the bottom of the bun in a cheeseburger.

Dan Pashman: Yes.

Kim Severson: Because it hits your mouth first, but also it keeps the bun from being soggy.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Kim Severson: Okay. However, when it comes to peanut butter sandwiches, you suggest jelly--peanut butter-jelly.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Kim Severson: And that, it seems to me is seepage, and the same seepage you were trying to avoid with the cheese. So, I'm going to blow the lid off of this.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] This is what happens when you invite a Pulitzer Prize winner to interview you.

Kim Severson: So which is it, Dan? Explain the difference to me.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] So, look, I don't have this issue with PB&J's, because, first of all, I like a hearty bread, so I'm not making my PB&J on supermarket white bread. Okay? And I'm also using like kind of thick — I mean, I'm not usually using like, you know, grape jelly. I'm more like a Bonne Maman wild blueberry guy, which is kind of thick anyway. It’s more of a preserve.

Kim Severson: Okay.

Dan Pashman: And I like the jelly on the bottom, because it hits your tongue, you get more sweetness that way, and you want it on the top because you don't want the peanut butter on the top, so the peanut butter doesn't get stuck to the roof of your mouth.

Kim Severson: Okay, thank you, that cleared that up.

Dan Pashman: All right.

[APPLAUSE]

Kim Severson: And I love on these interviews to do just a quick lightning round.

Dan Pashman: Let's do it.

Kim Severson: So you ready?

Dan Pashman: I'm ready.

Kim Severson: Just whatever first comes to your mind.

Dan Pashman: I love a lightening round. Okay.

Kim Severson: Okay. The pasta shape you wish didn't exist?

Dan Pashman: Angel hair.

Kim Severson: Ohh.

Dan Pashman: Or also wagon wheels and bow ties.

Kim Severson: You don't like the bow tie. Good.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Kim Severson: Good. Okay. One thing you never travel without?

Dan Pashman: Food.

Kim Severson: Okay, what's your plane snack?

Dan Pashman: Peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Kim Severson: Okay.

Dan Pashman: I'm terrified that someday I'm gonna get on a plane and they're gonna be like — like I've heard that like sometimes if someone has a peanut allergy on the plane, that they'll say no one can eat peanut butter things. So sometimes I bring almond butter if I'm feeling nervous.

Kim Severson: Okay.

Dan Pashman: But, yes, I do not get onto an airplane without at least three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Kim Severson: Great.

Dan Pashman: Most of which I eat before takeoff. [LAUGHS]

Kim Severson: Okay.

Dan Pashman: Just burning a hole in my backpack.

Kim Severson: Don’t you hate that, you eat it, and then you’re like, ahhh, why did I do that?

Dan Pashman: Right.

Kim Severson: Favorite breakfast?

Dan Pashman: That's gotta be something with eggs and cheese. Probably, a ham, egg, and cheese, American cheese omelette, which I will take the omelette, cut it in half, flip it inside out to put the cheese on the outside, and put it inside a toasted English muffin to make a sandwich.

Kim Severson: Nice. Pretty ...

Dan Pashman: Should I say it again slower?

[LAUGHING]

Kim Severson: Yeah. So, nothing too specific. Okay, got it. Okay. A chef you admire?

Dan Pashman: Michael Solomonov.

Kim Severson: Oh yeah, okay, from Philadelphia. A menu item that you'll always order?

Dan Pashman: I mean, it depends a lot on my mood, but I ... I would say, anything, like a dumpling or something wrapped in a flour tortilla, anything in a doughy encasem*nt ...

Kim Severson: Doughy encasem*nt.

Dan Pashman: Is always going to go to the top of my list.

Kim Severson: Okay, the doughy encasem*nt.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Kim Severson: How do you get over making a mistake?

Dan Pashman: You know, I mean, there's probably some mistakes I don't — you don't ever totally get over, but it's like, I'm kind of always moving. I'm a high strung person. I'm kind of type A. My brain moves at a fast pace. And I'm an ideas person, so I always have more ideas. And I just get excited about the next thing. And that's going to be a mixed blessing, because sometimes I have to be reminded to stop and appreciate the things that I've accomplished instead of always focusing on what the next thing is. But the flip side is that you also don't dwell too much on your mistakes.

Kim Severson: Very good. And one last question, and the answer cannot be anything about food ...

Dan Pashman: Okay.

Kim Severson: But if you were not a cookbook author, media star, pasta inventor, what would you be?

Dan Pashman: Probably a lawyer.

Kim Severson: Ah, God. There you go.

[LAUGHING]

Kim Severson: Well, I rest my case.

[APPLAUSE]

Dan Pashman: Back in Boston, Dan Souza also had a lightning round for me.

Dan Souza: I thought it’d be a fun exercise to like I’m gonna name an occasion, and you’ll tell me what the best pasta is for that.

Dan Pashman: Ohh. Okay. All right.

Dan Souza: Okay?

Dan Pashman: I may ask a few clarifying follow up questions.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Souza: Okay. You're hungover.

Dan Pashman: All right, so you want cheese.

Dan Souza: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: You got to have melted cheese.

Dan Souza: Yes yes, the doctor recommended cure for hangover. Yes, you need cheese.

Dan Pashman: Right, and or dairy.

Dan Souza: Yup.

Dan Pashman: It should be rich and creamy and very satisfying but also very simple.

Dan Souza: Yup.

Dan Pashman: Cause you don't want to work hard.

Dan Souza: No, no, no.

Dan Pashman: I would go with the shells with miso butter.

Dan Souza: Okay. First date.

Dan Pashman: All right, you don't want something too messy.

Dan Souza: Good, yep.

Dan Pashman: You don't want something that's going to give you bad breath.

Dan Souza: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: But, you want something that's gonna make the house smell really good cause you want the person to come in and be impressed, like, oh this person knows how to cook.

Dan Souza: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: You also, like, you don't know this person that well. So you don't — you know, you don't know how adventurous of an eater they are.

Dan Souza: Right, right.

Dan Pashman: So I would, like, err on the side of something basic.

Dan Souza: Okay.

Dan Pashman: So I would probably go with the scallion oil bucatin ...

Dan Souza: Mmm.

Dan Pashman: With runny eggs. It's got raw scallions, which I guess maybe aren't great for breath. But I guess if you're both eating them, whatever.

Dan Souza: Yeah, it cancels out

Dan Pashman: It's got fried scallions, raw scallions. It's got a sauce of, uh, lemon juice, soy sauce, and butter.

Dan Souza: Mm.

Dan Pashman: So it's beautifully balanced and then you put a runny egg on top and you break the yolk. And there's something very sensuous about a runny yolk.

Dan Souza: Yeah, there is. You just adopted a senior cat.

[AUDIENCE SWOONS]

Dan Pashman: Like, is the cat eating the pasta?

Dan Souza: No. No, no, no.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: So I'm just — this is something to cook for myself to celebrate the fact that I adopted a cat?

Dan Souza: Yeah, I just wanted to talk about senior cats, I think everyone should adopt a senior cats.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] You just adopted a cat, didn't you, Dan?

Dan Souza: Well, if you want to talk about it, yeah. So ...

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: Why don't I ask you, because I don't have this live experience.

Dan Souza: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: You just adopted a senior cat. What pasta dish are you going to eat? I'll throw it back at you.

Dan Souza: [LAUGHS] So I think the, um, dal and mac recipe was one of the ones in your book where I was like, no. But then I made it and I was like, yeah, definitely.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Dan Souza: I really, really — I really, really liked it. And it's a great doll, like even without the pasta involved. I think it's comforting. I think you could have a cat in your lap while you eat it. I think it'd be perfect.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Dan Souza: Yeah. I think it would be perfect.

Dan Pashman: Our final lightning round was in Seattle with Lindy West. But Lindy’s version was a little saucier than the others …

Lindy West: I want to do a little F.M.K. — A little F, marry, kill.

Dan Pashman: We can say it.

Lindy West: We can? The F word? I can't say it.

Dan Pashman: All right, all right.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Lindy, you're blushing.

Lindy West: Okay, I thought we could do a little culinary f*ck, marry, kill.

Dan Pashman: All right, all right.

[AUDIENCE CHEERS]

Lindy West: And I made these tough as hell. Okay. We'll start off straightforward. Preserved lemon, artichoke, broccoli rabe.

Dan Pashman: I would kill broccoli rabe, because I think there's a lot of — there's a lot of things out there that you can get similar flavors and textures from. Artichoke, I would marry, because it's like — it's an ingredient you can put in a lot of different directions, so again, you wouldn't get tired of it, and I would — I'd f*ck the preserved lemon.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: This is — yeah, this game sounds weird when you talk about foods, but ...

Lindy West: Okay, last ...

Dan Pashman: I do love preserved lemon. It's spunky, you know?

[LAUGHING]

Lindy West: All right, how about what’s your favorite food?

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: I mean, I really love flour tortillas.

Lindy West: Okay, how about cascatelli, flour tortillas, bagels?

Dan Pashman: Ohh. That's, that's very hard. I mean ...

Lindy West: It’s legally binding and we will be carrying out the sentence at the end of the show.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Yeah. I mean, honestly, of those three, the one that I eat the least often, so I get, like in a sort of a cold calculating way, bagels would be the one that I would kill.

[AUDIENCE GROANS]

Dan Pashman: But I also — it feels like I'm sort of turning my back on my heritage.

[LAUGHING]

Lindy West: I'm sorry. [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: By doing that. You know, I'm also, as I get older, Lindy, if I eat a whole bagel before 6 P.M., I have to go to bed.

Lindy West: Yeah.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: Like I can’t ...

Lindy West: Yeah. Okay, counterpoint: Whats wrong with that?

Dan Pashman: Okay, it must be like six loaves of bread compressed. So I just can't. I just can't pack a bagel away like I used to.

Lindy West: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: And then between flour tortillas and cascatelli, I mean, I guess, I would marry cascatelli because I do feel like I love it.

Lindy West: Awww.

Dan Pashman: Like we have a relationship, we've been through a lot together.

Lindy West: Yeah,

Dan Pashman: You know? So, you know, I can't ... I can't turn my back on cascatelli.

Lindy West: That's nice. Pasta, rice, bread?

Dan Pashman: Ohh. I mean, those are all really good. Are we assuming like a high quality bread?

Lindy West: Yeah, the best version of each.

Dan Pashman: Ohh.

[LAUGHING]

Lindy West: I was doing some soul searching and I actually think I would kill pasta. And then I was like, I shouldn't say it because I shouldn't ... I'll get fired from this show!

Dan Pashman: Cut her mic, that’s it!

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: I mean, I get, I would kill rice.

Lindy West: [GASPS]

Dan Pashman: Well, look, I love, I love all three of these things. That's the point of this game, is you're forced to make hard choices.

Lindy West: 1-800-DAILY- MAIL ...

Dan Pashman: I'm not disparaging ... I'm not disparaging any of these. But for me personally, yes, I grew up eating rice, but know, if you come from a food culture where rice is like an absolute staple, then what I just said is bonkers. But like for me, I love rice, but I didn't grow up with it at every meal. And so — and then, like as between pasta and bread, I would marry bread because I think there's more variety to it. So like over the long haul, I'd be less likely to get tired of it.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: And I’d f*ck the pasta.

[LAUGHING AND APPLAUSE]

Lindy West: That's good.

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Dan Pashman: Next week on The Sporkful, it’s the second half of our Best of the Book Tour episodes. Some of my recipe developers join me on stage, and things get personal.

CLIP (KATIE): When I used a sperm donor, you know, you get what you pay for, and I was like, "If I can pay for my kids to be a little Italian, I will."

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: And, we’ll hear from you, when we open the floor for Q&A:

CLIP (PERSON): And I'm wondering, Dan, you seem to do public failure so well.

[LAUGHING]

CLIP (PERSON): And yet you keep putting that out there publicly. What is that actually like behind the scenes for you?

Dan Pashman: That’s next week. While you’re waiting for next week, check out some of our recent episodes: Last week, I talked with a flavor chemist. Do you ever see on a label, in the ingredients , it says "natural flavors”? Well, we find out what natural flavors actually are. I hope you'll also check out recent episodes with New York Times food writer Priya Krishna about her cookbook, and the music producer benny blanco about his cookbook. Those are all up now.

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