Molly Baz and Sophia Roe: Jubilee 2023 transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe magazine.
For today's episode, we have a great chat between two Cherry Bombe superstars. Oh, and cover girls, right? They were both on our cover. Molly Baz and Sophia Roe. Sophia interviewed Molly at the Cherry Bombe Jubilee conference in April of last year. They covered a lot of ground from cookbooks, to kitchens, to creativity. We'll share their conversation with you in just a minute.Introducing them, our culinary creative Woldy Reyes of Woldy Kusina and cookbook author Ixta Belfrage, who joined us all the way from London.
For those of you new to Jubilee, it's Cherry Bombe's annual conference and hundreds of women and culinary creatives literally join us from around the world. It's a great day of food, drink, community, and conversation. This year's is taking place Saturday, April 20th in Manhattan, and tickets are on sale right now at CherryBombe.com. I would love to see you at Jubilee. Make sure you stay tuned until the end of today's show because we have a sweet little Jubilee surprise from pastry chef Paola Velez, right after Molly and Sophia.
What else? How would you like to be a Cherry Bombe investor? After a decade of bootstrapping, we finally decided to raise money and we're doing it via a community round on a platform called WeFunder. These are the final few days of our community round. It ends this Wednesday, January 31st. So head to WeFunder.com/CherryBombe to learn more. The link is in our show notes. We've raised over $650,000 for more than 200 investors, most of whom are women and most of whom are first-time investors. It means a lot to have our community fueling the next phase of Cherry Bombe. We have a lot planned for Cherry Bombe 2.0 as you can imagine. Thank you to everyone who has participated in our WeFunder campaign so far. You truly are the Bombe. Please note if you are considering this, it is a real investment, not a Kickstarter. Read the WeFunder Investor FAQs before you take any action. If you have questions about the round for me or our CEO, you can email us at info at cherrybombe.com.
Now let's check in with Molly and Sophia from Jubilee.
Woldy Reyes:
Hello, Bombesquad. Wow, look at all of you.
Ixta Belfrage:
Look at us.
Woldy Reyes:
Girl, I know. I'm so excited to be here. My name is Woldy Reyes. Some of you might know me on Instagram as Woldy Kusina, spelled K-U-S-I-N-A. I'm a queer chef and I love sharing my modern approach to Filipino food. I'm only the second dude to have ever been on the Jubilee stage. Thank you so much. My first cookbook is coming out in Spring 2025. I hope you all come to my Jubilee cookbook signing two years from now. Fun fact, I met my literary agent here last year.
Ixta Belfrage:
Love that for you, Woldy. My name is Ixta Belfrage. I'm so happy to be here at my very first Jubilee all the way from London. I'm also the author of “Mezcla,” a book about fusion cooking, inspired by my Brazilian heritage and my Italian and Mexican upbringing. I hope you'll all come to my book signing, which is today at 4:45. Woldy, I promise I'll come back for yours if you come to mine.
Woldy Reyes:
Girl, it's a deal. We're so honored to introduce our next guest. Molly Baz is a cook, recipe developer, and the bestselling author of “Cook This Book” and of the upcoming “More is More,” which no doubt will be another bestseller. Molly has her own membership club called The Club, which we all want to be a part of. She also has her own wine line called Drink This Wine. She's the proud mom of a wiener dog. Unfortunately, Tuna the Wiener is back home in L.A. He'll be here next year.
Ixta Belfrage:
Joining Molly is Sophia Roe, the James Beard award-winning chef, writer and founder of the Apartment Miso culinary studio, and the host and producer of the show “Counter Space.” Sophia was nominated for a daytime Emmy for outstanding culinary host for the show, making her the first Black woman to be nominated in that category. Congratulations, Sophia.
Woldy Reyes:
Everybody holler for Molly Baz and Sophia Roe.
Sophia Roe:
Thank you, thank you. Sick. Oh, my goodness. Hi. Oh, this is so-
Molly Baz:
Can you guys hear?
Sophia Roe:
Wow, these lights are so bright.
Molly Baz:
Wait, are we doing our picture? We said we were going to do a picture.
Sophia Roe:
So we're going to do it quickly. Okay, so this is Molly's first Jubilee, you guys. Okay, so it's her very first time. So all these people come up here and no one ever takes a picture of you guys. So we just thought it'd be really cool to do a little selfie picture moment. So let's...
Molly Baz:
If we may? Can we do this?
Sophia Roe:
Can we get in there? You guys got to be excited for this picture. Everybody hands up. Okay, let's do a video. So this is a really fun, exciting thing for me because I'm such a Molly fan, but this is my first time meeting Molly in person, which is wild. Yeah, isn't that wild to even think about?
Molly Baz:
It's crazy. We've known each other on the internet for a long time and it's the first IRL. So if we seem a little obsessed with our own conversation, apologies.
Sophia Roe:
Super obsessed. Actually, Kerry kept texting me, are you good with questions? I'm like, I don't need any questions.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, she walked in here, she's like, I have no notes. I know what I'm going to talk about.
Sophia Roe:
So if you're expecting something formal, like I said, it's definitely not going to be that. So before there was a second book, because that book baby is coming out in October, right? Before you were a New York Times bestseller, before you were a Bon App. Okay, before you were a restaurant cook, why food? Did food choose you? Did you choose food?
Molly Baz:
I think that I chose food, but because I happened upon a few circumstances in my life that really put food at the center of my life. I didn't grow up in a family that was super food obsessed. We ate well, but it wasn't... The focus of our family dinners wasn't like, what are the recipes? The way that I'm obsessed with it now.
Sophia Roe:
Where'd you grow up?
Molly Baz:
Upstate New York and my parents are here and you guys are lovely cooks, but it was just not all about food. We can all admit that.
Sophia Roe:
Just being honest.
Molly Baz:
The frozen peas kind of sucked. I'm not going to lie.
Sophia Roe:
Yummy.
Molly Baz:
Regardless, I studied abroad in Italy studying art history and chose to live in a homestay instead of in dorms while I was abroad. I lived with this woman named Graziella. This was, I don't know what year, but it was my second year of college and she was a widow and her kids had grown up and left the house and she spent all day long cooking. That was just what she did and that was her life. She would go to the market in the morning every single day, even though she could easily just go twice a week and stock up. But no, she was part of her ritual. Then she would come home and she would cook for me really rustic, simple, but very cared for meals. I would come home from school and sit across from her and she would feed me and I'd be like, oh my God, I've died and gone to heaven. She didn't speak any English. It was a little awkward at first, but we sat in silence and I ate.
Sophia Roe:
The food language. It doesn't matter if everybody speaks different language, you eat if you all are together and you eat a tomato, we all got it.
Molly Baz:
That translates.
Sophia Roe:
Yes.
Molly Baz:
So that was kind of when I realized I want to pursue... I love to eat. I love learning how to cook. I love watching her cook. I love the ritual of her going to the market and figuring out what she's making, all of that, and I want to figure out how to do that in my life professionally. So that's kind of the moment where I was like, ooh, art history, smell ya. I did finish my degree.
Sophia Roe:
The art history thing tracks. I'm going to come back to that, because I do believe there's so much aesthetic in what you do, but I do want to talk about, okay, so you come back from Italy, then what? What do you tell your parents?
Molly Baz:
So I don't know guys, what did I tell you? I think I was like, I want to work in restaurants. So I was home for the summer and started working in an Italian restaurant. I was very obsessed with Italian food at the time.
Sophia Roe:
Oh, cool. I didn't know that.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, I spent a few years just only eating and cooking Italian food, and now I feel pretty far away from that phase, but it comes in waves and so I decided I had a choice at that point. I obviously was going to finish my degree, but was like, do I go to culinary school? We've talked about this. My choice, my decision was no. I ran the numbers basically and was like, I'm going to pay for an education or I'm going to get paid a little bit, work in restaurants, and get the education.
Sophia Roe:
You'd already had the degree too. I'm a two-year college dropout. So you made the right decision.
Molly Baz:
Let's go.
Sophia Roe:
I dropped out of culinary school, because I ended up getting a job in a restaurant, which is the whole point of going.
Molly Baz:
Because you had to pay for it.
Sophia Roe:
Exactly.
Molly Baz:
So I decided that the best way to really learn how to cook beyond just having watched Graziella and playing in my home kitchen was to go and work in restaurants and really get the chops. So after I graduated college, I went, I think literally the day after I graduated college, got my degree, walked off-stage next day, walked into a kitchen and got a job and was like full-time line cook.
Sophia Roe:
I love that.
Molly Baz:
Yeah.
Sophia Roe:
Okay.
Molly Baz:
So I worked in restaurants for four years or so before burning out, and I was like, let me just kind of work my way around the scene and moved to New York City, worked in some restaurants here, until I felt like I was really equipped, really knew how to cook. Then I was like, what's next? Because I don't want to be a restaurant chef.
Sophia Roe:
So at restaurant chef stage, restaurant chef Molly, how did you feel about writing a recipe?
Molly Baz:
I didn't even know what a recipe was at restaurant chef stage Molly. I maybe followed some very vague formulas in binders inside in the backs of restaurants in order to execute my prep. But the idea of writing a recipe that was functional for a novice cook or a home cook was completely over my head or off the radar really. One of the things that was really hard, fast-forward a little bit to transitioning out of working in restaurants and into recipe development and working in a food magazine is having to totally change my brain, turn off restaurant chef Molly and turn on home cook Molly. It was a year or so before I got really comfortable with that new version of myself because I had all this pride about having learned how to cook in restaurants and walking into Bon Appetit and being asked to develop a recipe, everything was overwrought and overthought and I was like, there was a million elements to everything I wanted to do because that's how you cook in a restaurant.
Sophia Roe:
That's me. It's so bad, that's...
Molly Baz:
Yeah, you're still doing it.
Sophia Roe:
That's why everybody's like, where's your cookbook? I'm like I...
Molly Baz:
Yours.
Sophia Roe:
I want there to be a million things and a custard and a sauce, and it's painful.
Molly Baz:
That's a delicious way to eat. We're so lucky to be able to eat that way when we go out to restaurants where you have the luxury of all of this time to prep. But let's be real, home cooks aren't spending all day prepping. They're not making a sauce and a thing into this and of that and an overnight braise. I had to really change the way I thought about food and figure out what my identity was as a cook without all of that sort of baggage.
Sophia Roe:
Right. At Bon App, were you already thinking, I want to have a cookbook one day?
Molly Baz:
Yeah, definitely. Once I pivoted out of restaurants and into food media, I always loved food magazines. It was always a dream. I never thought that it would happen as soon as it did. When I got a call from the publisher about taking a meeting, I was like, whoa, wait, this is four years too early on my schedule. What's happening here? But yeah, I'll take the meeting. So writing a book just was expedited on my timeline.
Sophia Roe:
That is just wild to hear now.
Molly Baz:
You're going to do it too.
Sophia Roe:
I know, girl. We have the same book agent and I'm like, we love our booking. We love. So talk to me about the process of writing a book because I know it, but I think every single cookbook author goes through it kind of differently.
Molly Baz:
Yeah.
Sophia Roe:
How long ago did you start the first book?
Molly Baz:
The first one, if it came out in 2021, I probably started it in end of 2018, early 2019, so I guess four years and some ago. The idea for the first book, it's not like it was an idea that was in me my whole life and I was like, I'll be ready when I'm ready. I had no idea what my book would be. It wasn't until I started talking to a publisher and having a conversation that I started to really think about, well, if I'm going to put a book out in the world, what's it going to be? Actually Nicole, who's our book agent, was so helpful in helping me form my ideas into something that was self-contained and marketable as a book and not just totally all over the place.
So I figured out that the first book I wanted to be really about technique, I think that was restaurant Molly speaking again. Good technique is still at the core of great home cooking, even if it's simplified versions of techniques that I learned in restaurants. I feel strongly about really teaching those things to novice cooks in order to equip them well, to then later on be able to maybe improvise a little and kind of open up the fridge and choose your own adventure. But it feels to me like it's too overwhelming to do so if you don't know, here's how you sear a piece of meat. Here's how you scramble an egg and whatever, and this is what a vinaigrette is like. Here's the ratio. So the first book I thought about, what are all the things that I take for granted as someone who really knows how to cook? Then how can I put those in front of a young cook in a way that doesn't feel intimidating or pretentious?
Sophia Roe:
Even with the way that it's organized, the grocery list being this is what this is and this is where you can find it. I don't think about that at all.
Molly Baz:
Why don't people do that though?
Sophia Roe:
It's true. You're right.
Molly Baz:
I'm still confused about why and I feel... Yeah, what she's referring to is just how in many recipes you'll see an ingredient list listed just in order... The ingredients will be listed in the order they appear in the recipe, but I decided to organize it by...
Sophia Roe:
It's like a pantry, she has...
Molly Baz:
Category.
Sophia Roe:
Category, exactly.
Molly Baz:
That you would find it in your kitchen. There's a category in my recipe that will say dairy. If there's cheese and butter and eggs or whatever in a recipe, they will all be in the dairy category. You only have to go to your fridge and open up your dairy department once. When you're shopping in the supermarket, you're not circling around the supermarket, because you're just like... You're in the dairy department. What do we need here? Let's move on to the dry goods. Anyway...
Sophia Roe:
You think that's part of your Bon App era?
Molly Baz:
Yeah. I think that's just part of everything is a calculation of how do I remove the barrier to entry for a home cook, and what work can I do up front to take it out of the hands of the cook, so that they can just cook and try and understand what the hell is going on in the kitchen. I'm not throwing them for a loop around the grocery store and around their kitchen, and it's all just about me taking on the stress and taking it off their plate.
Sophia Roe:
You taking off the stress. I don't know. We'll come back to that. We'll come back to stress. I think for now I want to talk about aesthetic because I've never seen a cookbook that looks like yours and I've seen both of them. I got the advanced early copy of the second one, just in case you guys were wondering and it's so good. It's so good. So aesthetic. When I think about you, I actually, it's funny, even before I think about your book now, I just think about your home. This is the most incredible home in Los Angeles. If you guys don't know, please go on Instagram
Molly Baz:
Shout out to Bender Home.
Sophia Roe:
Oh my God. The most incredible home. So I want to talk about this art history degree now, because it wasn't for naught.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, that's true.
Sophia Roe:
You really do utilize it in your work every day.
Molly Baz:
Yeah. I think the reason that I even found art history compelling when I was in college is because I grew up in a pretty creative family. My dad was a photographer. My brother was quite an artist when he was younger, less so now because he's into birds now.
Sophia Roe:
He's into what now?
Molly Baz:
Birds. Large birds. Birds...
Sophia Roe:
Like a living... Like a live prey?
Molly Baz:
I guess they're called falcons. He's a falconer. You would love him.
Sophia Roe:
Wow. I already do.
Molly Baz:
At Talk on Hand is his Instagram.
Sophia Roe:
We're going to talk later.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, you'll love him. Anyway, I came from a pretty visually-minded household I feel like. Then also the school that I went to growing up in grade school was very creative. It was pretty loosey-goosey. Wednesdays were just create, and...
Sophia Roe:
Wow.
Molly Baz:
So if you wanted to do art all day, you did art all day or photography. So it was just, I guess a part of my life up until the point that I did a degree in art history. I think just a mindfulness for aesthetics has followed me. But then I also met a man named Ben Willett and he's over there. I married him and he has an incredible eye and is a designer and not necessarily a graphic designer, but just his whole world is visual and he has imparted so much of that on me. So the way that he sees the world is now a way that I see the world where it matters the way things look. it doesn't have to matter, but if it does matter, everything feels better.
Sophia Roe:
It really matters to me also.
Molly Baz:
I know.
Sophia Roe:
So I fully understand that. I think the way you explained why you wanted your book to look the way that it looks like the graphics sort of, what was it? Building blocks inspired?
Molly Baz:
Yeah.
Sophia Roe:
Talk to me about that.
Molly Baz:
The colors, if you guys have seen the book it or my first book is called “Cook This Book” and it's cobalt blue entirely, and the second book will be entirely red. The colors basically inside the book and that have become consequently representative of, think of just my brand in general and everything that I do were chosen because they're primary colors. It's red, blue, and yellow. Those to me are the first colors that you learn in school when you're learning about color theory and this the primary colors. When you're in kindergarten, you're learning with blocks and they're shapes and they're graphic and they're red, yellow and blue. So I thought what my whole MO here is to take people back to basics and build them from the foundation up, then what better colors to represent that? We'll just figure out how to make them cool.
Sophia Roe:
So talk to me about design, because your book, it doesn't look like any other cookbook. First off, you're on the cover of it, which I think is so cool. So was that by design? Did you choose that, to have yourself on the cover of your book?
Molly Baz:
No, I did not think I would be on the cover of the first book. I don't think the publisher thought or wanted me to, because I was newer in this field at that point, I think less recognizable by face. So the best way to sell a cookbook is to just put a really delicious picture of food on the cover.
Sophia Roe:
But Molly, that's the standard. I think for most people do it.
Molly Baz:
That's the standard.
Sophia Roe:
The standard. The standard is a beautiful piece.
Molly Baz:
Unless you're like Ina Garten, then you're like...
Sophia Roe:
It's true.
Molly Baz:
I'll buy Ina's book.
Sophia Roe:
Because she's Ina, right?
Molly Baz:
So I was trying to figure out what recipe in the first book would become the cover shot. I had no idea. I thought maybe it would be the Caesar salad because that's kind of become my signature dish. But also, do people... Not everyone loves salad, is that really going to sell a book? They probably want a plate of pasta. Then we were on set at the studio where we shot the book with my photographers, Peden and Munk, and they were just snapping, snapping, snapping, behind the scenes, whatever, all of these shots. They took one shot when I was not prepared. I didn't have my hair and makeup and whatever. It was not the cover shoot. We pulled it up and we were like, this is kind of the vibe of the book. This is the energy of Molly caught off guard and in the middle of eating and just a little bit irreverent.
Sophia Roe:
That's such a cool story. I think it's so cool.
Molly Baz:
So we pitched it to the publisher and they were like, actually, yeah, we kind of fuck with this, so...
Sophia Roe:
It's so cool. So here's something else really cool is that you didn't go with traditional cookbook designers.
Molly Baz:
Yes.
Sophia Roe:
So these people had never, so whoever made your book had never made a cookbook before.
Molly Baz:
Yes, so that was another conscious decision that we made... Oftentimes a cookbook will be designed in-house by the in-house design team at the publisher. Because I come with a kind of predetermined aesthetic, and my partner cares a lot about graphic design, and we knew we wanted to bring someone else on, to bring some new light into the process of designing a book. We were very particular about picking graphic designers who had never designed cookbooks before, because there is something about approaching it with a totally blank slate and without the preconceived ideas about this is what a headnote or intro to a recipe looks like, and here's where it lives on the page, and this is what steps look like in a recipe and a title.
It's like for someone who just is thinking visually but doesn't have all of these preconceived notions about the flow of a recipe to come in and put their own sort of brain on it, it felt really exciting to me. I think as a result, the design of the book doesn't feel cookbooky necessarily, but it's still functional. We did the same for “More Is More.” It's a different design team, but similarly, no experience in cookbooks, just like badass designers.
Sophia Roe:
Oh my God, it's so good. It's so community and family and friends. I kind of love how you talk about that and how you're sort of just like, I am who I am because of all these really cool, talented people around me.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, I think it's cool to be up here, but also I fully recognize that the book wouldn't look anything like it did, if not for so many people who were a part of it. Same for literally everything I do. My wine wouldn't look how it is and it wouldn't taste how it is and it wouldn't get distributed to where it does... There are so many people who support everything that I do and make it possible, and then I get all the credit for it, which feels unfair. So this is a shout-out to everyone who's helped me at any point on anything. Thank you.
Sophia Roe:
I love it. Shout out, fam. Yeah, me too, man. Sometimes I still don't know why I'm up here.
Molly Baz:
Yeah.
Sophia Roe:
So let's talk about your home, because this kitchen, I think about your kitchen all the time actually. I was unaware that the kitchen was inspired by the color of butter.
Molly Baz:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. We talked about this on the phone the other day.
Sophia Roe:
I didn't know that.
Molly Baz:
The house was designed that we moved into, or I guess in the middle of the pandemic, out in L.A. We were living in New York, we moved to L.A. My husband decided to take it on as his first residential project and design the whole thing. Obviously the kitchen was going to be a big part of that. I had thoughts about what I wanted in my kitchen, what I needed in my kitchen. But throughout the whole process of designing the house, I realized that the way that we were communicating with one another about design choices and color palettes and materials and whatever, my inclination was always to relate it back to food. so instead of being like, I really think it would be great to have a light, creamy yellow-colored kitchen, I was like, let's do it the color of butter or whatever, something like that. So our conversations, at least for me, that's my language. So the kitchen being butter colored is one. then we designed this bathroom off of our bedroom, that's inspired by Caesar salad.
Sophia Roe:
Guys, you have come on Instagram and look at this bathroom.
Molly Baz:
It literally looks like...
Sophia Roe:
It literally looks like a Caesar salad. It's so epic.
Molly Baz:
When you see it, you can't unsee it. But if you walked in there, you wouldn't be like, whoa, it's the Caesar salad bath. It's not like illustrations of Caesar salad.
Sophia Roe:
No.
Molly Baz:
But it's the palette and it's the vibe. So yeah, we got kind of playful with the design of our house. I obviously deferred to him on most decisions, but I think that whenever there was a moment for a conversation about color or whatever, it became a conversation about food. Then Ben just made it all look perfect.
Sophia Roe:
Okay. Second book. I really want to keep talking. I'm so sorry. Second book. So did you know when you came up with the first book that you're going to do the second book?
Molly Baz:
Yeah. After going through the experience of writing the first book, which was a lot, and it's so much work, like unbelievable amounts of work.
Sophia Roe:
Talk about the timeline. How long does it actually take?
Molly Baz:
From when you start talking to a publisher to when it's out in the world? Two and a half to three years.
Sophia Roe:
Definitely.
Molly Baz:
That's a really long time, especially in food media, where food is happening on the internet so rapidly and trends are happening and recipes come out like this, and then they go out of style like this. So to develop recipes that you know aren't going to see the light of day for two years is very overwhelming. You really have to think about, let's make recipes that are timeless so that they're not just so last year when they come out. In any case, I so enjoyed the process of writing a book. I think that my life goes so fast in so many ways and many of ours do. So much of it happens on social media.
So many of the other things I do are quick turnaround projects. I was given the opportunity with my first book to work on it for two years. It's a very special thing in a time like this, I think, and it forced me to slow down. So I loved the process of it, and as soon as the first book came out, I was like, I want to do this again. As I was telling you the other day, if everything else got taken out from under me and I was banned from YouTube and my wine company went down the tubes...
Sophia Roe:
Not going to happen, but okay.
Molly Baz:
Instagram shut down and I did nothing else. But someone was like, but you can keep writing cookbooks and-
Sophia Roe:
You'd be happy.
Molly Baz:
...People'll still buy them, I'd be like, great, we're good here.
Sophia Roe:
So you're going to do a third?
Molly Baz:
Oh yeah, I know what it's going to be, but I can't talk about it.
Sophia Roe:
Let's talk about your wine. It's my dream to have wine, so I just think how this came about for you is the coolest story. Please, please share.
Molly Baz:
So the wine was, it was a pretty organic...
Sophia Roe:
This wine, Drink This Wine.
Molly Baz:
It's called Drink This Wine. I created this company in partnership with Andy Young, who is a really, really incredible artist of a winemaker out of Portland, and he has a wine label called The Marigny. We became friends years ago when I was working at Bon Appetit, and he was always pouring wine in the test kitchen. There was just this jolly dude who always was at our parties pouring wine, and I was like, who is this guy? We became friends. Then during the pandemic, he had a couple extra cases of rose that he hadn't labeled and were bottled, and he was like, what do I do with these? It's a random small allotment. He called me up and was like, would you want to do a collab and just slap both our names on it and maybe we'll do a really limited run, fun little thing? I was like, yeah, I do want to do that, but also should we just start a wine company together and just screw the collab? Let's just go big. He was like, also that and...
Sophia Roe:
Like, what? That's so cool.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, and so we just decided to instead of do this tiny release, work towards a bigger actual company that will have legs beyond the drop, and...
Sophia Roe:
That's why you got to work with your friends.
Molly Baz:
So the wine company is basically all of the wine, this is the most incredible part of it for me...
Sophia Roe:
It is.
Molly Baz:
Are designed to be consumed with my food. So Andy, the winemaker, before we started anything and decided on grapes or whatever direction we were going to go with our first drop, was like, I'm going to cook through your book, through “Cook This Book.” I'm going to understand your palate and what ingredients you lean towards and what kind of flavors really represent Molly. Then I'm going to create a wine that I feel compliments that.
Sophia Roe:
Isn't that freaking the coolest thing?
Molly Baz:
It was amazing.
Sophia Roe:
I just think that is the coolest thing.
Molly Baz:
I tasted it and I was like, nailed it.
Sophia Roe:
I love it.
Molly Baz:
So yeah, I feel so lucky that, again, what I was just mentioning earlier, that I wouldn't have a wine company, if it weren't for this incredible artist who can just taste my food and be like, here's your wine, Molly. It's just... I feel blessed.
Sophia Roe:
It's just the coolest thing. So I know we're running out of time, but there's this really cool story about this recipe that didn't make it in your book that I have to hear.
Molly Baz:
Oh, yeah.
Sophia Roe:
Sort of like I deal with these when you test something and you test something and it just doesn't work and it's so frustrating. Talk to me about that.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, so I think that one thing that I want to talk about more in my work and just don't is all of the fails and the flops along the way. We show this beautiful finished dish on Instagram, and no one realizes that I tested four other versions and was like, that kind of sucked. I was telling Sophia the other day about a recipe in “More Is More,” the forthcoming book, that I think I tested 16 times, some ridiculous amount of time where it's like, just give up at this point. It was like I had this vision and it was going to be a coconut custard filled cornbread. The cornbread, you're going to slice into it, and this amazing coconut custard was going to spill out.
Sophia Roe:
Sounds amazing.
Molly Baz:
I failed, and I failed, and I flopped, and I failed and again and again, and I kept doing it, and eventually I said, it's just not meant to be. So I sort of rethought things and was like, all right, well, if the custard is not going on the inside, then it's happening on the outside.
Sophia Roe:
Not a waste.
Molly Baz:
What can I do to turn that idea into something that I've spent all of this time on? So I took the custard and turned it into a spreadable coconut jam instead. Regardless, the point of the story is more just that I think we were talking about perseverance and failures, pushing through failures and allowing them to get you to a place that you otherwise wouldn't, instead of just throwing your hands up and being like, I hate this recipe.
Sophia Roe:
It's really important when you're doing a cookbook, right? Because there's so many recipes.
Molly Baz:
So many.
Sophia Roe:
So many things you need to test. Molly, thank you so much. Congratulations, man.
Molly Baz:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you to Molly and Sophia. Last year's Jubilee was such a beautiful day. It was nice to relive a little piece of it. Now here's an amuse-bouche of sorts from Jubilee 2022. It's Paola Velez award-winning pastry chef and co-founder of Bakers Against Racism, the world's largest charity bake sale.
Paola Velez:
Oh, hello. Hi. Hi, everyone. So Kerry reached out to me to say something. At first, it was say whatever you like. I said, "Huh, what does that mean?" Then as Kerry and I do, we exchanged back and forth and I said, "Kerry, I can't do this. I'm too nervous, I'm too scared, I'm too this, that." I asked her, what do you actually want me to do? Just tell me and I'll do it, anything. So she said, can you read a poem and then share a few thoughts? I said, oh, I could do that. I could share a poem that I don't have to write. So this is Summer Day by Mary Oliver.
"Who made the world? Who made the swan and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean, the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth, instead of up and down, who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open and floats away. I don't know exactly what prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I've been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver.
Thank you, Kerry, for sharing this beautiful poem with me. The first time I read this poem, I sat in my thoughts and asked, what is my plan for my one wild and precious life? Anxiety washed over me. I'm no stranger to anxiety, as many of you in this room are as well. But as I reread what Mary Oliver kept saying, I let my mind wander through the field of flowers where I let my fingertips gently touch each wildflower, appreciating their beautiful yet fragile fragrance. I daydreamed that my imaginary self could finally stop and smell my flowers. If you're like me, I hope that you stop to smell yours too. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you, Paola. That was so beautiful. Hearing you read Mary Oliver's poem brought tears to my eyes. That's it for today's show, folks. If you'd like to join us at this year's Jubilee, head to cherrybombe.com for tickets. If you want to call yourself a Cherry Bombe investor or add angel investor to your IG bio, you have a few days left. Check out the Cherry Bombe community round on Wefunder.com. You can also find the link in our show notes. The campaign ends Wednesday, January 31st. We have a lot of exciting things planned for the next decade of Cherry Bombe and want all of you to come along with us. Our theme song is by the band TraLaLa. Joseph Hazan is the studio engineer for Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. Happy birthday, Joe. Our producer is Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.