“Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance – of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you’ll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.”
― Samin Nosrat
“By definition, comfort foods are rich and creamy or evocative of childhood pleasures.”
― Samin Nosrat
“While other stone fruits grow tender on the surface as they ripen, apricots take an alternate path to maturity, softening from the inside out.”
― Samin Nosrat
“What any immigrant is after is a taste of home.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Years of cooking have taught me that the harder a flour is, the ‘thirstier’ it is. In other words, harder flours tend to have a greater capacity to absorb water than their softer counterparts.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’ve never tasted a store-bought tortilla that compares in texture or flavor with one made by hand, so I’m happy to invest some time. It’s worth it just to see a friend take her first bite and understand, finally, that a flour tortilla is meant to be an essential component, not just a lackluster wrapper.”
― Samin Nosrat
“A burger is a black dress; a kebab is a Met Gala gown.”
― Samin Nosrat
“No one’s born a good cook. You have to learn and practice.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The cornerstone of every Persian meal is rice, or polo.”
― Samin Nosrat
“We all have incredible relationships to what we eat, to what we don’t eat, to what we’ve eaten since childhood and what we were fed, to what food means to us. And so I find it a really powerful tool in storytelling and in opening people’s hearts and their minds.”
― Samin Nosrat
“My students regularly spend 20 hours or more in the kitchen with me. I try to teach them that even the most well-written recipe for, say, gazpacho can never take into account the ways in which a tomato that’s lapped each morning and evening by coastal fog will taste completely different from one grown in a hot, inland valley.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Friends have warned me that I can be a bully in the kitchen. With every fledgling relationship, I’m anxiously aware that the simple act of cooking alongside my new paramour can unleash havoc.”
― Samin Nosrat
“No Persian meal is complete without an abundance of herbs.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn to use it well, and food will taste good.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I get an especially acute case of agita at the thought of a mortar and pestle.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Jessica Battilana has been my kindred cooking spirit for more than 10 years. Our careers as cooks and writers have taken us through the same Bay Area restaurants, bakeries, magazines, and newspapers.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I love mayonnaise. It’s one of the first lessons I teach my cooking students. Turning eggs and oil into an emulsion – that creamy, satisfying third thing – feels like magic.”
― Samin Nosrat
“It’s easy to discount water’s importance in the kitchen. After all, it has no flavor, and more often than not, it’s left off ingredient lists, making it seem like an afterthought. Yet water is an essential element of almost everything we cook and eat, and it affects the flavor and texture of all our food.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Growing up, I was aware of the kids-don’t-like-vegetables trope, but it didn’t make much sense to me. I never had any choice; all the traditional Iranian dishes my mom cooked teemed with herbs and vegetables.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Grilling used to make me nervous, but then I learned to view the fire as just another source of heat, no different from a stove or an oven.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I take, like, 9,000 supplements every morning. I don’t know if it’s completely placebo or not, but I’m super committed to these supplements: like, I can’t face the day without them.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I grew up eating and loving Persian food, going to school, and everyone making fun of me.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I love a Yorkshire pudding. It’s basically pancake batter that’s fried in beef fat and puffs up; it’s like you can’t go wrong.”
― Samin Nosrat
“There are so many food shows, really beautiful ones, that exist to elevate professional cooking and professional chefs. But there aren’t that many that really celebrate home cooking or are for home cooks especially.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Does anybody like being recognized? I understand that it’s my job. I’m grateful about people who are moved enough by the work to want to say something. But I mourn the loss of anonymity.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The apricot’s fleetingly short harvest – only a few weeks long – explains the urge to save the season in a jar. But cooked fruit, no matter how expertly preserved, can never measure up to the flawlessness of its fresh counterpart.”
― Samin Nosrat
“My mom, who left Iran in 1976, steeped us in the smells, tastes, and traditions of Persian cuisine.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Growing up, I thought salt belonged in a shaker at the table and nowhere else.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Salt’s relationship to flavor is multidimensional: It has its own particular taste, and it both balances and enhances the flavor of other ingredients.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Inexpensive and forgiving, kosher salt is fantastic for everyday cooking and tastes pure.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I love roast chicken, juicy summer tomatoes, and carrot cake slathered with tangy cream-cheese frosting.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I love bitter broccoli rabe tossed with Calabrian chiles and hidden under a mountain of snowy shaved Parmesan.”
― Samin Nosrat
“As a student of Alice Waters, the patron saint of salad, I’m no stranger to the art of lettuce washing.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The best – and most popular – recipe I’ve ever written has three ingredients: buttermilk, chicken, and salt.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’ve always joked that my food memoirs will be titled ‘Brutta ma Buona,’ the phrase Italians use to describe food that’s delicious but rustic-looking at best: ugly but good.”
― Samin Nosrat
“At some point during every cooking class I teach, I do my signature move: dramatically add handful upon handful of salt to a large pot of boiling water, then taste it and add even more.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Steaming offers no opportunity for either seasoning or developing the brown, crisp textures that sauteing and roasting afford.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The only good things I’ve seen emerge from a steamer are tamales, couscous, and dumplings – maybe the occasional artichoke or delicate fish fillet. But baby turnips with their tender greens still attached should be boiled in water as salty as the sea until their flesh is silky and soft.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Long-stemmed broccoli should be tossed with olive oil and flaky salt and roasted in a hot oven until the florets turn the color of hazelnut shells and shatter on the tongue.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Fried vegetables, often overbattered and undercooked, tend to disappoint me with their tough or soggy crusts.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Throughout my time working in restaurants, I developed an illogical dread of some basic kitchen tasks. None of them – picking and chopping parsley, peeling and mincing garlic, browning pans of ground meat – were particularly difficult. But at the scale required in a professional kitchen, they felt Sisyphean.”
― Samin Nosrat
“My favorite afternoon snack as a child in San Diego was a still-steaming flour tortilla purchased at the taqueria down the street from my school, and I’ve yearned for them ever since I moved away.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The higher a flour’s protein content, the more structure and elasticity it will lend a dough.”
― Samin Nosrat
“While a pot of boiling water may not offer the char or smoke of a grill, it does give the cook an advantage when it comes to seasoning food.”
― Samin Nosrat
“A successful shrimp boil requires layering ingredients into the pot so that everything is done cooking at once. A carefully timed choreography dictates the order in which ingredients are added to ensure no one has to eat raw potatoes or chewy shrimp.”
― Samin Nosrat
“When I was young, one Sunday every month or so, my mom would load my brothers and me into our station wagon and drive 80 miles north to Orange County, where we’d meet our extended family at a Persian restaurant for lunch.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Like all Iranian kids, I grew up feeling strongly that the best part of dinner was tahdig, the crisp, golden crust that forms at the bottom of every pot of Persian rice – and sometimes other dishes, too.”
― Samin Nosrat
“After coating pasta with tomato-rich meat sauce, my mom would drizzle the bottom of a nonstick pot with oil and put it all back in to form a dark crust of tangled noodles. Once she unmolded it at the table like a cake, my brothers and I would excitedly cut into it, verbally laying claim to our preferred pieces.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Unlike leftover pasta, leftover risotto is viewed by Italians as a gift. Cooks shape it into balls or stuff it with a pinch of stewed meat or cheese. Then they bread and deep-fry the fritters until golden brown, yielding arancini, the indulgent ‘little oranges’ I can never resist.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Apricots are the most private fruit, loath to reveal their secrets.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Tart and sweet, tinged with the faint scent of almonds and flowers, the Blenheim is the ideal apricot for both eating and preserving.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I love the look of delight on my guests’ faces when I serve them a bowl of olive-oil aioli alongside roasted potatoes or a grand Nicoise salad.”
― Samin Nosrat
“One pillar of my cooking is that salad dressing is sacred and that you always make it with the most delicious oil you can find. Usually, that means extra-virgin olive oil.”
― Samin Nosrat
“My inability to follow recipes as written – without obeying the devil on my shoulder telling me to replace ingredients or change the temperature – is well documented.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Browning butter affects more than just the color and the flavor of its milk solids; the water that butter contains also simmers away.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Most canele recipes begin with an instruction to brush $30 copper molds with melted beeswax. Unsurprisingly, I’ve never made it past the Internet search for ‘used canele molds’ before giving up.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’ve always believed that pastry chefs are born, not made. They’re patient, methodical, tidy, and organized. It’s why I stick to the savory side of the kitchen – I’m far too messy and impulsive to do all the measuring, timing, and rule-following that pastry demands.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I know pastry chefs who are overwhelmed by the idea of tasting, rather than measuring, their way to a balanced vinaigrette.”
― Samin Nosrat
“There’s a certain kind of dark-crusted sourdough bread I’m incapable of resisting. A sixth sense alerts me anytime I veer within a three-block radius of a bakery offering tangy country loaves with mahogany crusts. Without fail, I’ll make my way inside and buy one, even if there’s already half a loaf growing stale on my countertop.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Hello, my name is Samin, and I’m an artisanal-bread hoarder.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The temperatures required for caramelization and browning almost always far exceed the boiling point of water. So the presence of water on the surface of a food, or on the bottom of a pan, is a signal that browning can’t yet occur.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’ll eat anything, even foods I’ve always shunned, when a friend cooks it.”
― Samin Nosrat
“In sausage, fat is a source of both delightfully porky flavor and a springy texture. Without enough fat, sausage will be dry and tasteless.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Ours was a pork-free household. The rules were arbitrary but strict: No pork in the house, ever. Except for the occasional pepperoni pizza. Or maybe Hawaiian.”
― Samin Nosrat
“At home, Mom served us turkey breakfast links that she got at the health-food store. But whenever we went out for breakfast, she let my brothers and me order pork sausages (though, inexplicably, not bacon).”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’d never been religious, but I’d always obeyed my elders. My decision to become an omnivore was fraught, not because it was a religious transgression but because it was my first act of self-assertion as a young adult.”
― Samin Nosrat
“In the wake of a failed relationship, I’m often flooded with if-onlys.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Very early in my culinary career, while helping another cook prepare the staff meal, I stirred some chopped raw garlic and herbs into a bowl of leftover lentils. The atonement for this sin was so extreme that I’ve never repeated it: After being chastised, I spent the next 20 minutes fishing out the minuscule pieces of garlic.”
― Samin Nosrat
“There are two proper ways to use garlic: pounding and blooming. Neither involves a press, which is little more than a torture device for a beloved ingredient, smushing it up into watery squiggles of inconsistent size that will never cook evenly or vanish into a vinaigrette. If you have one, throw it away!”
― Samin Nosrat
“The classic French blanch-and-cool technique I learned at Chez Panisse yields the kind of brilliant, picturesque vegetables we all want to see on restaurant plates. Long-cooked foods, on the other hand, fall firmly into the ‘ugly but good’ camp of the Tuscan cucina povera, where flavor far outshines looks.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The delicate sweetness of just-picked vegetables is always worth savoring.”
― Samin Nosrat
“For the timid or uninitiated, leaf-wrapped foods offer an ideal and gentle introduction to fire cooking. Liberated from the need to worry about whether the fish is sticking to the grill or burning, pay attention instead to the rate of browning on the surface of the leaf, which you’ll get to discard whether it chars or remains pale.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I hate recipes.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I could probably go on for a long time about the differences between Northern California and Southern California Mexican food.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I grew up in San Diego with immigrant parents, before the food blogs, before this kind of celebrity chef culture we know now.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I really love the beach.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The beach has always been a constant in my life.”
― Samin Nosrat
“There’s never been anyone like Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, and there never will be. She is such an important source of inspiration for me, reluctant recipe writer and follower that I am.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I always turn to Wendell Berry for inspiration on food, community, agriculture, and, well, just being a human.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I wake up naturally and begrudgingly around 6:10 A.M. That’s wired in so deeply that I wake up at that time no matter where I am, in any time zone. I wish I could sleep later.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I live by myself, so I derive a lot of joy from being with my friends and their families.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’ve had an untraditional trajectory with food: I was in my mom’s home, then I was a college kid making mac and cheese and quesadillas, and then I was a professional cook. I never had that time where you figure out how to cook for yourself at home.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Things taste less salty when they’re cool.”
― Samin Nosrat
“People never used to look at me twice. That was my superpower: When I met someone, I could decide whether to care about them based on whether they cared about me.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Chex mix is this wonderful crunch that you just can’t get enough of.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’m not the number-one fan of the heavy holiday meal. And also, I didn’t grow up eating them, the traditional Western holiday meals, so it’s just not something I have a nostalgic relationship to.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’m surprisingly squeamish.”
― Samin Nosrat
“For me, I am very much a champion of home cooking and home cooks.”
― Samin Nosrat
“There’s nothing historically in my life very flashy. I’m not exceptionally beautiful. I’m not exceptionally wealthy.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I can only be me!”
― Samin Nosrat
“I just drink regular drip coffee, but I’m kind of a coffee baby.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I’m the child of immigrants, and there was always a garage filled with food, just in case, and you kept money under the mattress. You were always prepared, because you couldn’t trust that you were being taken care of. So that translated into my life into a lot of opportunity hoarding.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I would say, probably 7 or 8 years into my cooking career, it stopped being about just food for me. Food’s really fun, but I’ve always been about people, and I realized that food is just a really convenient tool for me to connect people and bring them together.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I think the goal of ‘Chef’s Table’ is that you are so moved by the story that you want to go and eat that person’s food at their restaurant. But I wanted the takeaway from my show to be that you go and cook the thing.”
― Samin Nosrat
“Chez Panisse is a sensory temple – you might have to be made of stone not to fall for it.”
― Samin Nosrat
“The people-pleasing and performing is 100% ingrained in me, partly because I was a little brown girl growing up in a very white, homogeneous community in San Diego – where, in second grade, I was called a terrorist.”
― Samin Nosrat
“People love giving cooks spoons, I’ve noticed. Or, at least, they love giving them to me.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I went straight from college into restaurants, so, from the beginning, my idea of what a kitchen should be was the highfalutin’ restaurant type – and what I had at home never measured up to that.”
― Samin Nosrat
“When I left restaurants, I had to learn to be a home cook.”
― Samin Nosrat
“I have a lot of plants – my living room is like a jungle. I like the idea of bringing the outside in.”
― Samin Nosrat
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