Hi everyone, welcome to Potluck Food Talks. Today we have a very special guest, Rebeca
Perez-Geronimo. She's a publisher and we're going to talk about books. How are you, Rebeca?
Hi, very nice to be here. Thank you for the invite. I have a lot of books around me, so
I hope we can dig in and talk about them.
Yeah, we were also talking about the Juju's that were recently in Venezuela and right
now is a good moment to go because probably they're going to reactivate all the sanctions
so this golden age that we're living right now is going to get over soon. What are your
impressions on that?
Yeah, it's very surreal. I actually recently started rereading A Hundred Years of Solitude,
so Macondo and Garcia Marquez, and it reminded me so much of Latin American countries that
are so surreal. So I've been living in Berlin for eight years and it was my first time coming
back to Caracas. So I saw things differently from outside and when I was there I was like,
this is so crazy. How can this be real? It's like a Macondo, of course. But yeah, I recommend
very much traveling there right now. It was a really nice trip. Also food-wise, I got
to reconnect a lot with my roots. So it was really nice for me to go back and cook with
my aunts and do ayacas, arepas.
Do you have any favorite Venezuelan food books?
Well, the Bible, so Armando Scannone has taught me a lot because it's like a book that everyone
had. No, like everyone had it at their homes. So I've learned a lot from that one in particular.
Yeah, like his recipes, I know by fact that, well, his recipes, he was like this kind of,
I will use the word aristocrat, like living in a large house and he had like this ladies
that cooked at his house and these were actually the makers of that book.
The cooks behind.
Yeah, but what he did is he measured everything with precision and that's why his recipes
are so good. So it's a great book, Mi Cocina of Armando Scannone to anyone who wants to
get into Venezuelan cooking because the recipes just work and that's why everybody had that
book. It's also like a really good reference. And I think that these kinds of things are
important. I had lunch a few months ago with Narda Lepis and she was saying that everybody
in Argentina cooks rice wrong because at some point there was some instruction somewhere
like in a rice package that said that rice needed to be cooked like pasta, you know,
like with lots of water and then straining it. So everybody was cooking rice like that
because of that. That is funny. You know, so it's really important to like a good basis
or a good reference. But at the same time, like talking to my family, like about recipes,
because we did a Ayacas, which I don't know if you've discussed Ayacas in your podcast,
but it's this very difficult dish that requires a lot of work. So families get together and
they all have like their own recipe. But it's funny because I was asking them like, hi,
give me a recipe. And it's like, they don't measure anything. Like they do have a reference
of things, but they do not have like this scientific or methodological thing of like
writing down and putting the numbers. So it's really difficult to get like a precision in
the kitchen from the family. Yeah, I agree. I completely agree. You also mentioned a hundred
years of solitude. And it's funny because when I was thinking about doing this talk
with you and talking about books and literature and food, that's actually one of the books
that came to my mind because there are a lot, I wouldn't say recipes, but like dishes that
he mentions and they give like this whole layer to the book. And it's always like, yeah,
I was making a soup and the soup had this and that, or someone cooked a soup that I
did. And they just mentioned the main ingredients. And for some reason, I always remember soups
with plantain in that book and a hundred years of solitude. And the other book that comes
to my mind that has like a lot of dishes inside is Don Quixote. There has been a lot of, or
at least a few cookbooks about Don Quixote, about the dishes in Don Quixote. And I imagine
all these tools from Castilla and these kinds of things, you know, like from middle ages.
Yeah. And I was, and I was waiting to document like a time and place and a way to eat. And
I think both books do a good job at that. Yeah. I think when you start tracing back
the histories behind dishes, like it can give you a lot of context. It's something that
we do every day. So any detail like really tells you a lot about what's going on or yeah,
the environment in general. So also like the way people speak about like how they cook,
it's interesting. It's like we were discussing this thing about storytelling that I'm very
drawn to. I studied literature. So of course, like we're discussing books. And for me, the
story behind the recipes or the story behind what we eat is the most important thing, or
at least one of the things that excite me the most, aside from cooking, aside from cooking
and eating, of course. But like the reading the stories is really, really important. I
have a lot of memoirs that are centered in food. And it's, I have a whole list that we
can maybe like then start mentioning that we can recommend. It's in this simplicity
and in this like very honest and intimate way of dealing with food that I am like super
excited all the time, like with books in general.
Yeah. But before we start, I want to mention my favorite food author. Well, I told you
like, I just told you before the call that I started a food blog, just a few, like maybe
two months, maybe three months. I'm publishing one article each week just to keep my pen
sharp, you know, and it's a nice exercise because, you know, I have to, I also learned
to make them shorter. Now I'm writing just five minute articles, just like a quick topic,
a quick mention on something. And I think that's also better to read for anyone. So
in the whole process of getting into food writing, because I'm also doing narrative
on a different project, but food writing is like a different thing. It's its own thing.
And I would say my favorite author and the most influential for sure for me has been
when it comes to just food is MFK Fisher. And well, I discovered her on a Japanese cookbook
and she wrote the prologue. And I remember reading this and she was describing a soup
or yeah, I think it was a soup with some dumplings inside or something. And it really reproduced
the experience of eating this, you know, like getting into the textures, the flavors, how
they combine and the experience of eating it. That I had like this almost, you know,
like sensory memory of having that dish, even though I never had it. And I was like, who
is this? And of course I thought it was a man because MFK Fisher, you know, like you
read that and it's who is this? And then I discovered, yeah, it was a woman, an American.
And for me, it's the best writing I read. I have her whole work and it's something I
get often to get a read and to see like technically how she builds the stories because also telling
a dish like the way of eating it, you can also add the same narrative structure that
you would add to a micro tale or something. And yeah, I understand that after I recommended
you, you also read some books of her or got some book of her.
Yeah, I have a couple of them and it's true what you're saying. Like this multisensorial
way of approaching writing about food is so telling of her writing. Like she's such a
pro in doing that. And she has inspired so many other writers in that, like, I don't
know if it's a genre on its own. And it's truly like, it's very endearing, no? Like
it's like very touching, as you were mentioning that she was describing a plate and then you
felt all the aromas. And that's not easy to convey, I think, with literature. When you
play with the senses, you have to be really good at it. And she's really good. Another
writer that I really recommend that goes into that direction, she's alive, she's more contemporary
and her name is Tamara Adler. She has this book, An Everlasting Meal. I found her, I
think, after M.F.K. Fisher. That was your recommendation. And she has truly also changed
my way of like approaching food in general. It's like these meditations about food more
than just like describing a dish. They really go deep into like what that means. And it's
like a philosophy in itself. I don't know, it's really inspiring because I also have
a blog or I try to keep it up. I haven't written in a while. It's linked to my publishing house
that is called Concordia Press, in which I also talk a lot about plants. So I'm very
interested in this intersection between plants and cooking, cooking with plants and or fermenting
or experimenting in general, but like more dealing with edible plants. So I also try
to keep my pen sharp and write, but I've been working a lot. So it's a little bit dormant
at the moment. It's not so active. But yeah, just going back to Tamara, she has been so
inspiring and also M.F.K. Fisher just talking about the writing perspective, like models
of people who I look up to, like I want to write like them because it's not easy. You
have to practice a lot and eat a lot and cook a lot and be open to food.
Yeah. Well, what I think I have like an unfair advantage is of not only being a chef, but
I also being part of tasting panels where they train you to identify aromas and also
a lot of tastings. You see these people that when I'm not a pro, but I've seen this, I
get someone tasting a wine and using 20 descriptors to and you go like, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
tobacco, leather, exactly. Blackberry. Joghurt, milk. You know what, one of the experiments
they do when you're getting trained is they give you like a small thing to smell. And
it's usually something really familiar. You know, I know what this is, but the words won't
come out and it's because you're just not trained. And then it's something really obvious
like cinnamon. I knew it, you know, like this happens all the time. But as a chef, you get
trained to that tasting, you know, a sauce and you have to know what is missing because
you already know the recipe. And then you saw the cardamom is missing or this kind of
thing.
It's good. I mean, I'm super jealous because yes, you get to train a lot and like really
build up your vocabulary. I remember when I got COVID the first time that I lost my
sense of smell, I found myself reading and researching about smell, which is one of the
senses that people tend to ignore the most. And people tend to give more attention to,
I don't know, the other senses. And with this pandemic, then there was kind of like a highlight
on smelling, but that for chefs, I think it's like something so important because they're
all the time like reliant so much on smelling. And in my experience, because I have a lot
of ferments or I tend to have a lot of ferments at home, I also was like really lacking on
like, or I was missing a lot like the fact that I could smell and really tell like, oh,
I have to feed my scoby or I have to do this and this because I couldn't like smell things.
But yeah, I am digressing. I was, I just wanted to say that like for regular folks that do
not work in the kitchen or are exposed to like dealing with vocabulary of smelling,
it's really hard. Like it's really, it's really, that's why I'm jealous of you that.
There are like this, like what I just said, that you have this micro bottles with just
an aroma. There are this set to train wine taste through beginners. So you get a set
of, I don't know, 350 aromas. And it's like a game, you know, you smell it and you have
to, and after you start doing that, you realize you're starting to use a part of your brain
you weren't using, like associating aromas with words. And that's quite interesting.
And then also adding of course, a layer of texture with, you know, describing how the
texture was and, and of course the whole context and the place. But I was talking just about
food, food, but when you go to the broader of what is food, not only the, the, the sensory
experience of course, Anthony Bourdain. And I'm pretty sure that he has had an influence
on my writing for sure. And the podcast, this podcast for sure, like the kind of contents
we deliver. He was doing that in 99, you know, like, and then he's still extremely influential.
So you had another book, you just sent me like a list of recommendations, more home
cooking by Laura, Laurie Colwin. What can you tell us about that one?
Yeah, Laurie Colwin, I have it around here and more home cooking. This is a really interesting
book in a way that it's very similar to what we were talking about storytelling and so
on. But it has a format that I really enjoyed a lot, like a hybrid of a writing book and
a cookbook, like an essay book and a cookbook because she divides this, like it's little
fragments of stories and each fragment ends up with a recipe.
Okay. So it's linking perhaps a memory or perhaps an anecdote or anything that is really
personal to her. And then at the end she gives you a recipe that is linked to that memory.
So for me, this is like, I want to do this. And especially because I think in Spanish,
I haven't found a writer that has something similar and I've been dealing a lot with like
family recipes. So it's one format that I am also like looking a lot into to see if
I do a format, something similar for a project, which is like I said, like memories and then
recipes and the familiarity in this connection, which I'm, I think it's lovely.
I think you would like, you know, Mugaritz, the restaurant, like one of their first books
and they say themselves, and a lot of people say that, that it's kind of like when a band
has their first album and all the cult fans, they say the first album is the best, you
know, and then they became something else. That kind of happens with that book of Mugaritz
called Chlorophyllia. And so they had like a complete different style of cooking back
then, but every single recipe represents a herb and most of them are wild herbs. And
then you have the recipe, which is like a Michelin star level technical recipe. But
then there is like, I don't know how to describe it. I would describe it like as a free writing
from this outflowers that are not chefs, but these are like, you know, fictitious anecdotes
or almost poems and prose or just like a free writing related to the herb, not to the dish.
So you have this story about the herb, the recipe, and that's how the book goes. And
that back then they were doing like really interesting and creative approach to cookbooks.
I remember another one they did, which is almost not known, but a lot of people, I think
the name is 35 millimeters and they invited chefs from all over the world to make a recipe
related to a scene in a movie. So I was working in a restaurant where the chef got invited.
So I saw the whole invitation letter. They would get like the whole invitation, super
full of, we invite you to participate in this book, blah, blah, blah, blah. Also with a
DVD in the box, all with the branding of the book they were doing with the movie so that
the chef could see the movie and, and you know, cook something to it. And yeah, it's
like, you know, these kinds of books that are more conceptual, not exactly because you're
going to use this to make a recipe, but you're just kind of like, I don't know, like a aesthetic
experience, you know?
I like that very much. It made me think also that it's a different type of book, but also
these ways of dealing with recipes that are a little bit more alternative to having like
a list of ingredients and instructions. And I'm talking about Nigel Slater, that he has
so many, so many books and he's so prolific. He has so much writing published and his recipes
are just long stories. Like when you see the books, it's just like a big paragraph, three
pages and then at the end, a list of ingredients, you know? And I learned a lot more from that
way of cooking, like that way of like, I don't know, presenting cookbooks. I'm not a trained
chef. I wish I was. I'm just very curious about cooking. I cook a lot. I love it. And
I learned a lot from cookbooks like that one, like the ones that present you recipes in
a way that you can experiment yourself. And that's why, for example, Tamara Adler taught
me a lot because it's like, she says things like, oh, when you salt things, you have to
salt with your hands. So you get used to the feeling of like how much salt you need for
things. Like when you say, oh, this is a pinch or this is, I don't know. And those are like
simple things that when you're a trained chef and you have to practice and do a lot of things
that I don't do in my kitchen, it's really helpful, you know, because it gives you a
lot of liberty and also a room for experimentation and not feeling like you have to stick to
one recipe to make it work, you know? That I think a lot of people approach the cookbook
like, oh, if I change this, then it's going to taste bad or it's going to be horrible.
It's not going to work out. No, it's like, you can always do some tweaks and trust yourself
on like what you're smelling, what you're like tasting, especially that, not like you
taste things. People sometimes don't taste things while they cook.
No, of course. And that's also, it's also a way to develop your own palette and have
fun while cooking and understanding what you like and what you don't. It's funny because
professional recipes are exactly the opposite. They're just the list of ingredients and then
the steps super straightforward. Like 80 degrees, half the time, let it rest, done.
You know, just four words and that's, that's the recipe.
That's why I'm not a chef. It's not my style.
So another one I have here from the Les Jus and Mes, Crying in H Mart by Michelle Sauner.
Yes. So this is also a memoir book and it's a very heartbreaking story about how one daughter
connects to her mother when she gets sick and they connect through food. So they're
Korean and the daughter is Korean American. So she starts getting to know the food from
Korea cooking for her mom. Like she connects with her mom after having a very difficult
relationship. And it goes like the story is just like this passage of like connecting
daughter mother and then the mother dies. And like at least she lives with this beautiful
connection to her through cooking. So it's really nice because also a lot of things that
I didn't know about Korean food, especially like what I liked the most also is like how
food can be medicine somehow. The type of food that you eat when you're sick, the type
of food that you eat when you're feeling that way or another is so embedded in what she's
telling. And I really like her. She's also a musician. Actually, she's the lead singer
of Japanese Breakfast, which is an amazing title for a band. So I also like the fact
that she's coming from another place. Like I like hybrid things and like really things
that come together from different angles. So I think that also was something that interests
me a lot about this book. I really recommend.
Like a super classic, I would say when it comes to food literature or narrative that
involved food, I would say is Laura's Kibels. How's her name? For water and chocolate.
Yeah, yeah. But I was in Spanish. I remember the most. Yeah. I remember reading that as
a kid, actually. And then never again. And also the movie, I remember it was a super nice movie.
Yeah. Like like this traditional Mexican cooking in a huge house. And there were a lot of super
interesting recipes and all with this layer of magic realism that you will find in a lot
of Latin American literature. Always, always, always in reality. Latin American reality
as well. Yeah. Another book that is also, I think I didn't mention it in the list, but
it's also really a catch. I think it was published in 2022 is by Rebecca Mae Johnson and it's
called Small Fires. And it's about recipes in the way that like how she presents the
book is that she repeats one recipe for, I don't know how many hundred times. So she's
all the time talking about the same recipe, but also reflecting on what is a recipe and
how does a recipe behave in different contexts with different people. And I'm curious to
pick your brain on it. That's super interesting. Yeah. Because I mean, you as a chef, like
you have to repeat something and you're striving for consistency, you know? Like you have to
make it like as consistent as possible because you're working. No, but yes you do. But in
restaurants, recipes have an evolution. Like if you see in a restaurant, like a recipe
at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year, the recipe has changed because
it has been optimized hopefully for best, you know? But you also get to see them changing
for worse. You know, like, oh no, no, no, we're skipping this step because you know,
like actually you always want to simplify as much as possible. And especially in a restaurant,
you know, you don't want to make steps you could save or do things that don't have anything
unless there is a reason for it or unless you are a very, you know, obsessive chef that
wants like super, you know, like complex technique. But also I remember this chef, he has a super
nice book also, Tetsuya Wakuda. He's like a Japanese Australian. He used to be very
big 15 years ago. I think he still has a restaurant, but he used to be like regarded as one of
the best chefs in the world back then in the 2000s, not anymore. But yeah, he would talk
about serving the same dish for 20 years, the same, same dish. One of his classics,
it was a wild salmon, but that it would evolve through time, that it was not the same dish
anymore, you know, like that's also interesting. I love this idea of this transformation in
recipes. I do a workshop that I've been doing for several years now that is called Fermentation
as a Metaphor. It's inspired by a book of Sandra Elick's cuts that is called The Same
Fermentation as Metaphor. And I do this, like it's fermentation and writing. I chose to
work with the sauerkraut because I think it's one of the easiest ferments more like there,
I don't know, it's a generous ferment because it's really hard to get it wrong. So I usually
do these workshops in very short periods of time in which we work on a sauerkraut together.
I teach the people like the basics of fermenting and then we write a text that is based on
this experience of doing sauerkraut. So I invite people to observe their own sauerkraut
through, I don't know, a period of like two weeks and then smell it and see how it behaves
and the bubbles that arises and all of these things.
Name it, very important.
Yes, name it, give it a name, all of that. So it's funny because the idea with it is
that from the basis of the first exercise that we do, which is making this sauerkraut,
we all have the same ingredients, but each sauerkraut will be different, of course. And
then also the writing will be different even though we're like starting from the base,
the base is the same. So it's the same ingredients and also like the same exercise they all have
to do. So I've been repeating this workshop for a long time now and I used to say to myself
out, maybe I'll get bored because it's like doing the same over and over again. But I
see how it's been transforming and all the stories that come with it is so much fun because
like people are like, their minds are just wonderful. I've had like many, many beautiful
encounters in which like, yeah, it's like you're doing the same and you're using the
same, but it's always so different. And I really like that. I don't know if you have
felt anything like that with recipes or with any type of like, I don't know, special play
that you repeat often.
I can recall like having a special relationship. No, actually a super common question that
anybody who is a chef gets asked all the time. And at least I don't have an answer. What
is your specialty? And I'm like, well, I don't have anything. I just do things, you know,
like most of the time if I'm cooking at home, most of the time I'm freestyling. It's very
rarely I will be following a recipe because I just want to have fun, you know, like because
I have the technical knowledge. Otherwise I would be worried from doing something wrong.
You mentioned Sandor Katz. I met him. I went, I went having pinches and beers with him here
in San Sebastian. Amazing guy. He's incredible. And I was at a workshop with him. He was doing
sauerkraut as well. And I really, really recommend his book, The Art of Fermentation. Of course,
a Bible. It's an amazing book. And it's funny because my friends that are really fermentation
freaks like Diego Prado, when we were talking about that book, of course he likes a book,
but he's like, yeah, it's super nice, but it's a novel. He's more like technical books,
you know, like this was like too narrative. But yeah, it's nice to read a novel on fermentation
and the different approaches and techniques and, and the stories behind it. Well, of course
you see my tendency. So I'm more into storytelling. So I see that book, The Art of Fermentation,
and it's like, wow, this is so cool because it's like, he's telling you a whole story
about where he learned to do this or that. And then in the middle you have the technique,
no? So that's, I really admire him a lot. If he's been a huge reference for me, especially
because he blends these topics that we're talking about, like this storytelling is super
important to him, but he's also very, like when you're dealing with that amount of like,
I don't know, fermentation knowledge, you do have to get technical. You cannot improvise
that much at some point. Yeah. It's a lot of information in that book for sure. A lot,
a lot. So cool that you met him. Yeah. The other book that I really liked, I don't know
if you know this one, The Third Plate by Dan Barber. Yes, I have it here. Because that's
a chef and also storytelling and it talks a lot about food systems and also like kind
of like a journalist approach about specific chefs and producers and the story and everything.
And yeah, I think it's, it's quite cool. It's a super good read for sure. Yeah. I think
it has also this political view of food and he's working from his, so his baseline is
restaurants, no? And it gets really political. I really liked that. It made me think on one
of the books that I send you by Alice Waters, Coming to My Senses. And it's this memoir
about like her developing Japanese and all of the political struggles as well in between
and why she decided to go to, to choose this path. Because when she started, there was
not like this concept of farm to table or not as she started developing, at least that
I know of. That's something I could read because I, I'm a big fan of Alice Waters and she's
hugely influential in all the restaurant movement, especially in the West coast and the United
States. But I've never read one of her books. I've read articles, opinions, quotes, these
kinds of things, you know, recipes, but never one of her books. So this might be something
I could get. You know, I'm not reading from a few years on. I've been just listening to
audiobooks because it's my way of consuming books. Like I get the audiobooks and I go
for a walk, you know, it's better than being laying on the couch. So I do two things at
a time. And it's a different way to consume the same content. And yeah, I'm thinking especially
with long books, I do that. Yeah. Because I rather having walks, uh, some, some, you
know, like a long novel can last like 30 hours of audiobook.
It's also very useful now because we're on the go a lot. So yeah, it's true that with
books you have to have a pause from all these movements in which we're involved to an everyday
basis. And it made me think like, uh, I was curious because, um, I really like podcasts
about food in general. So I appreciate the work you're doing because it's really fun.
Also like it's really meditative for me when people actually explain recipes, it's really
interesting. I don't know. It's like, uh, I've been listening to a few podcasts that
they just like talk about recipes and it's funny because when people are linking to the
storytelling, they're telling you about the food is really soothing for me.
Yeah, I guess it's like, I once heard from a TV chef, he was saying that some study proved
that 99% of the people that watch TV shows don't cook the recipes. You know, like they
just enjoy watching the cooking. It's like a way of entertaining in itself.
That's it for this week's episode of potluck food talks. If you like what we're doing,
make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also find us
on Instagram and Tik Tok as potluck food talks. The show airs every Monday.