Eat Your Words Presents: Saved by the Bellini

For the spring season finale of Eat Your Words, Cathy is joined in the studio by Hetty McKinnon, author of three cookbooks, the founder of the local salad-delivery business Arthur Street Kitchen, and the founder of Peddler, a multicultural food journal. Hetty shares why she focused on the broad theme of family for this cookbook, and how it's a vegetarian cookbook geared towards everyday family meals. Hetty also talks about how her cooking is inspired by the memories and crafty tricks of her Chinese mother. We'll talk about how Chinese and other multicultural elements are intertwined into her everyday cooking, and how cooking for family shouldn't be fancy, but fun.

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Cathy is joined on the line with Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton and Sinikka Elliot, co-authors of Pressure Cooker, which takes a good, hard look at the realities of home cooking for many working mothers. The authors completed a five-year study where they interviewed over 150 women in North Carolina, and share their findings in this book. They find that much of the cooking advice of modern-day food gurus such as Michael Pollan or Jamie Oliver isn't relevant or realistic for many who would otherwise like to, and that we need to solve social inequities through policy first. The authors share some ideas for making cooking efficient, economical, and communal.

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Cathy welcomes Andrea Nguyen back to the show to talk about her latest cookbook, Vietnamese Food Any Day. Andrea explains how she was inspired to write this book looking back on her fondness for grocery shopping—and how her family would improvise with ingredients they found in the US rather than what they were used to cooking with in Vietnam, and making delicious adaptations with them. Andrea welcomes everyone to learn a few Vietnamese techniques and dishes and have fun with them. Cathy and Andrea also talk about the strides food media has made in recent years in celebrating writers of color and cooking from diverse perspectives.

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Cathy is joined in the station with Carla Lalli Music, Food Director of Bon Appetit magazine who recently published her first cookbook: Where Cooking Begins. Carla describes how she came up with the theme of her book—food shopping and how to make it work for your lifestyle—and how she turned that philosophy into a cookbook with more than 70 recipes and half-dozen techniques. Carla challenges the wisdom of shopping for all your ingredients for the week on the weekend and advocates for a more flexible routine, which will probably lead you to more fun in the kitchen.

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Today, Cathy is joined on the phone by Erin Byers Murray, a Nashville-based food writer and recipient of the Les Dames d'Escoffier MFK Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing, whose latest book is all about Grits. Erin shares how she came to the topic, after having lived away from the South, where she was born, for much of her life. She wanted to explore the changing culinary culture of the South and found grits to be a rich topic that is held very near and dear to many Southerners. Hear Erin talk about the history of grits, from Native American traditions to the role that women have always played in bringing it to the table. And hear about how the production of grits has been industrialized, changing the flavor and nuances of grits, but you can find many newer, artisanal grain mills producing heritage corn grits today.

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On today's episode, Cathy is joined in-studio by Diana Zheng, author of the cookbook Jia!: The Food of Swatow and the Teochew Diaspora. This region of Southern China, commonly called Teoswa, is home to a delicious and distinct cuisine, yet not many have heard of it outside of China. Diana shares her revelations in learning about the food of her heritage, and how the culture has spread to parts of Southeast Asia. Distinct traces of Teoswa cuisine can be found in Vietnamese, Singaporean and Thai dishes today, and even restaurants of those cuisines in the US. Hear Diana share some signature dishes from the region, and how a focus on fresh seafood and clean flavors guides its philosophy.

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In this episode, Cathy dials up Andrea Chesman, veteran cookbook author who has written many books on back-to-the-land cooking topics. Andrea's latest book not only tells the story of how animal fats has been wrongly maligned through slick marketing and corporate interests in the US, but also how to use it in the everyday home through 100 recipes. She goes over the basics of rendering fat from chicken, how to store it, and how to use it for amazingly crispy kale chips. She also tells us what to cook with beef fat, goose fat, pork fat, and more—and how all your favorite recipes at home can be enhanced by animal fat, a forgotten byproduct of cooking animal meat that has been used throughout the ages.

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Cathy is joined on the phone by Michelle and Suzanne Rousseau, restauranteurs of the Kingston, Jamaica-based Summerhouse at The Liguanea Club and authors of two cookbooks on Caribbean cookery. Their latest, Provisions, centers on vegetarian recipes based on hearty, starchy ground roots—the traditional cookery of their ancestors. The sisters talk about learning about their great-grandmother Martha, who was a pioneering female restaurant owner in Jamaica who developed the most delectable patties on the island, and also the erasure of her story and those of other women who have forged what we know of as Caribbean cuisine today. They talk about why it's important to share their stories, and how they are carrying on the torch as culinary professionals sharing the legacy of Caribbean cooking today.

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This week, Diana Kuan returns to the studio to talk about her latest cookbook, Red Hot Kitchen. Also the author of her first book, The Chinese Takeout Cookbook, Diana talks about why spicy sauces from Asia are great when made at home, and often surprisingly easy. She takes us through some of the classic condiments throughout the book, and how chili peppers got to Asia not so long ago. She also shares shortcut and vegetarian-friendly versions of some of the classics. Perfect for everyday use or your Lunar New Year feast, Asian sauces and the recipes in her book are endlessly adaptable.

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This week, Cathy chats with Ann Hood, author of 14 novels, a best-selling memoir, and her latest collection of essays on food, Kitchen Yarns. As an Italian American, and the wife of the food writer Michael Ruhlman, food is never far from discussion in Ann's life. Ann shares what writers, books, and memorable recipes have inspired her food writing, and she reads aloud an excerpt from an essay about her dad's (not terrific) cooking.

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