Antoni Porowski Transcript

Antoni Porowski Transcript

Antoni Porowski:
I love the word plop. Just like a small plop of this and then you plop it in. It's a noun and verb in my book, apparently.

Kerry Diamond:
Hey, Bombesquad. You're listening to Radio Cherry Bombe and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. We're coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City.

Today is a fun day because our guest is Antoni Porowski, who many of you know and love as the food and wine guy from Netflix's Queer Eye. Antoni has a brand new book, Let's Do Dinner, his second cookbook, and it is out September 14th. He joins me in just a bit to talk all about the book and what he's been up to.

I'd like to thank our friends at Kerrygold for supporting Radio Cherry Bombe. Kerrygold is the maker of beautiful Irish butter and cheese made from grass-fed dairy. I have actually visited some of the Kerrygold family farms in Ireland and seen firsthand how they make their incredible product. If you haven't tried Kerrygold, look for it the next time you're at your favorite grocery store.

And speaking of Kerrygold, tonight is the Cherry Bombe Cheese Ball, yes, the Cheese Ball taking place at the Demo Kitchen at the new ACE Hotel Brooklyn. We've got a fun night of fashion and fromage in store for those who are joining us. Our special guest is Marissa Mullen of This Cheese Plate Will Change Your Life.

What else? We'll have a special sparkling wine toast with Mumm Napa, a cheese tasting with Kerrygold, Cambozola, and Cypress Grove, and a special cheese-inspired dessert reception with Vosges Haut Chocolat and Cafe Panna.

The event is sold out, but you can follow all the action on Instagram. If you're joining us tonight, I will see you soon, and in the meantime, enjoy my chat with Antoni Porowski.

Kerry Diamond:
Antoni, Welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.

Antoni Porowski:
Thank you for having me.

Kerry Diamond:
We are recording this right before you start your book tour. I saw all your dates out there. How does it feel to have booked number two's launch right around the corner?

Antoni Porowski:
Very different than it did with book one. I think with the first book, I didn't really know what to expect because I had never written a cookbook before, I had never gone on tour for anything before, it was a lot of firsts. With Let's Do Dinner, with my second book, it's been a lot of start stop as the entire world has been, I think, for a lot of us. We started on this book, it was actually slated to come out last year and then of course, the world took a hold, but it was nice because I got to go and retest some of the recipes and work on, headnotes are so important to me because I just, I love to write novels for every single thing and thank goodness, my lovely co-author and dear friend, Mindy Fox, is not only a great coauthor, but she's also a fantastic editor. And on top of that, we had an editor, so I had really strong women around me reminding me that less is more and to cut out a lot of the nonsense. Not everyone needs 10 pages of headnotes for every single recipe.

Kerry Diamond:
The only person who gets away with that is Nigella. Nigella gets to write a book as a headnote.

Antoni Porowski:
I just cocked my head back very traumatically because Feast is one of my favorite, my voice shakes when I think about it because it's just one of the most beautifully written books ever where she manages to make it also comforting and homey, but also, there's a sensuality in which she writes with that's just, ah, I love her so much.

Kerry Diamond:
I love her so much. She wrote a story for our new issue which is all about cookbooks and chefs. She's such a beautiful writer that she makes me want to just hang up my hat and not be a writer anymore.

Antoni Porowski:
I know, it's like, why am I doing what I'm doing when people like that exist?

Kerry Diamond:
Exactly.

Antoni Porowski:
That's exactly how I feel.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, well, anyway, your book is wonderful. I didn't realize it was supposed to come out last year.

Antoni Porowski:
Yeah. So we pushed it forward a little and now it's, coming out this year and it's a whole new world. Even with touring, it's trying to pay attention to everything that's going on in the cities. We're not just able to show up to larger bookstores and independent bookstores as we wish and throw events and do lines and get to meet and greet and I'll get every person that comes in. But that said, I'm just really excited to connect with people who are just out there and want to cook. Queer Eye is so fulfilling in so many ways, but it's nice to be able to just do my own thing and it's my little side project, if you will, my little solo album.

Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. You hit the New York Times bestseller list with your last one.

Antoni Porowski:
I did. No pressure for this one.

Kerry Diamond:
No. But it is. It's like making the top 40 with your solo album. So why Let's Do Dinner? Why not another meal? Let's do breakfast, let's do brunch?

Antoni Porowski:
For me personally, I don't know, two reasons, well, many reasons for it, but I think when I look back at childhood, the most important meals of the day were really breakfast and dinner. And breakfast. Wasn't really about cooking, it was all about a massive fruit board and my father would slice open a papaya and put fresh lime and some flake salt and pineapple with mint and all that kind of stuff, but there wasn't that much preparation involved.

And then, for dinners, my mother was an excellent home cook and that was really, living in a pretty dysfunctional family, that was the one moment where we all really got along and where we sat and experienced a tremendous amount of joy because we would just be eating really good food and we wouldn't be fighting most of the time.

And I just think dinners is something that's so that's so important and I think even looking back at the past year and when people were in quarantine, the obsession with banana bread and bread and general and people were taking on a lot of these laborious recipes and things and these big undertakings, things that they've never really made before, I do, I'm an optimist and I feel like, I always try to find the bright side of everything and I do feel like a lot of people who didn't cook previously who were more accustomed to ordering delivery or takeout had more time on their hands. But now, as the world opens up and we all go back to work, whether it's virtual or IRL, I want people to continue that, but in a way, again, that's sustainable and I think it's what I've learned from Queer Eye.

Yes, I do like to make my ambitious recipes on weekends when I have a little bit more time, but when it comes down to it, dinner is something that, I don't know, I like to have food that's really good and well thought out, but at the same time, I don't want it to be too complicated because the irony of the life that I have now versus what life used to be like pre-Queer Eye is, I don't have as much time to cook anymore, but I still want to eat good food. It's how to get dinner on the table quicker, but without being five ingredients or less about it. I love those books, but that's just not me, or a certain type of cuisine. Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
It's interesting. I hadn't thought about it until you said it, but so many of the articles you read now about how people's lives changed during the pandemic, they talk about actually being home and eating with their spouses, eating with their children, sometimes for the first time in ages and they always mentioned dinner. It's not, "Oh, I got to eat lunch with my kids. I got to eat breakfast with my family." It's always, "We got to eat dinner together as a family."

Antoni Porowski:
Yeah. I think it's the most important meal. I've skipped breakfast before and substituted for a smoothie. I don't think I've ever skipped a dinner before. That's one meal that I just have not been able to, I'd be miserable, I would go to bed very grouchy. It's a necessity.

Kerry Diamond:
Tell me about those childhood meals. First off, where did you grow up?

Antoni Porowski:
My parents are from Poland. Both my sisters were born there as well. I was the first one in my family born outside of Europe. I was born in Montreal, in Canada. I love Montreal so much. It's an incredibly diverse, multicultural environment. I think that's why I made a decision pretty early on that I was going to live in New York, not only because of personal ambitions, but it's just the diversity. That was a norm for me.

In elementary school, we had, at St. Lawrence, we have this tradition called the Buffet Des Nations and it's the buffet of nations. Most of my friends, my friend Andrew, his mother was Portuguese, his father was Iranian. My friend Nikolas, his mother was Greek, his father was Italian. So you had parents that came from two completely different parts of the world and you would come to the cafeteria and you would bring food from your respective country and you would just break bread and share.

That was a norm for me, just being exposed to all of those things, even though, I have to admit, I was a pretty picky eater. If it had melted cheese on it, I was fine, but I was open to all of those things as a kid. I think that definitely really shaped the way I approach food and the curiosity that I have. Also, my parents as well. We traveled with them, sure, but whenever went on trips together, just the two of them, they would come back and when they went to Morocco, we would be having tajine and there'd be a lot of olives and citrus in our meals for the following month or if they went to the Caribbean, they'd come back and we would have all kinds of different salsas on grilled fish for awhile and that was just, that's how we traveled. It was always about where are we going to eat? Where's the market? We'd be having breakfast and we'd be talking about what we were going to have for dinner. Few people that I know in my life were as obsessed with food as I am and particularly my sister and my father are one of them. We are definitely the same when it comes to that.

Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned that your mom is a very good cook. Did you pick up much from her or were you not really paying attention to cooking and the kitchen at that point?

Antoni Porowski:
Oh, I was paying attention because I wasn't allowed to cook with her. I would say on the other end of the island and I judged her for a really long time because I didn't understand why she didn't want me to help her, she was very particular and liked things done a certain way. But now I am that exact same person. There's an episode in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat where Samin talks about how, when she has her friends over, she'll have one person pick the leaves off of cilantro and another person chop so that they feel like they're part of that process. That's so aspirational to me because I'm not that person. I wish I could be, but with my mom, I would basically just watch her as a kid, whether it was Christmas Eve dinner and she'd be making… these tiny little use filled with wild mushrooms that we would go pick in the early summer, early fall months in the Eastern Townships of Montreal.

One of my sisters was allowed because she was very good from a very young age and extremely creative, so she did her own thing, but I just watched. And I think that actually really helped me because then, when I was in college and I was broke and I had a roommate and I had to make food for us because we weren't just going to have Subway and pizza for dinner every day, there were things that I actually remembered, which was really nice. It all came back and then I had the power of Food Network and YouTube to go look up whatever it was that I didn't know and I just figured it out from there.

Kerry Diamond:
Where did you go to college?

Antoni Porowski:
In Québec, particularly, there's this in between, there's a college, which was Mary Annapolis, and then for university, I stayed in Montreal as well and I studied psychology.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I love Montreal. I mean, the food scene hadn't kind of popped the way it has over the past 10, 20 years back then, but I love that city.

All right, let's go back to your cookbook. I would love to have you walk us through a few recipes.

Antoni Porowski:
Okay.

Kerry Diamond:
Let's start with one, that's a great gateway for the rest of the recipes. Where should people start?

Antoni Porowski:
A great gateway? You mentioned right before we started that you were surprised at how many salads there were and I think I do eat quite a bit of salads. I think that they're so easy, for the most part, to assemble during the week. Okay. I'm so bad at choosing a single thing, it's like choosing my babies, but I think the warm kale and chicken salad with toasted hazelnuts and croutons, I love a good hack during the week and as much as I love to roast my own chicken, I don't always have the time. If you buy a rotisserie chicken, I don't get it flavored with lemon or anything, I just try to get the organic one and I try to get the one with the darkest crispy skin possible on it. You can use it for so many different things.

And the warm kale and chicken salad, it was born actually out of a pet peeve of mine. A lot of these fast casual restaurants serve chopped salads and kale that just isn't dressed or massaged and you just feel like a horse and the key with this is just like a nice warm vinegarette that softens it, that you pour over, because I frankly don't have time to massage kale during the week. And rotisserie chicken is so easy. For a normal human being, it's like four meals, but I eat a lot, so it's probably less than two meals, but still.

Kerry Diamond:
Rotisserie chickens are the gifts that keep on giving because you can do a million things with it, and then you can use the bones to make stock.

Antoni Porowski:
Yes, 100%. We use the rotisserie chicken in this, it's a quote unquote braised, like a pappardelle sauce that makes you think of that classic rabbit sauce. It's really creamy, but uses rotisserie chicken. And then, we use it in the salad as well. But this salad, I love, because it kind of checks all the boxes of the things that make me happy. It's sweet from the raisins and it's got some chili flake for a little bit of heat and then it's got loads of protein from the chicken.

Kerry Diamond:
Why do you have torn croutons?

Antoni Porowski:
I was on book tour for book one and we were in San Francisco and we went to Zuni and had the famous chicken where the juice is just poured down and you have these torn croutons and they're not perfect and square, they're just nice and rough, like these old fragments and they just soak up all the beautiful juices. That was my little homage to that and I was like, "Oh, I want to do that and I want to have it during the week," and not always able to go to San Francisco or almost ever actually, so-

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, I love that. That's such an iconic dish, so that's so lovely that that's a salad version of the dish. I would eat that every night.

Antoni Porowski:
There you go.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Next question. What recipe is the most you?

Antoni Porowski:
I would say ... I talk about them all the time, but I love them so much. Eggs, the perfect soft scramble. Everyone should know how to make eggs at least two to three different ways. They're cheap, they're packed with protein and omega-3s. They're available literally everywhere. And if you want to splurge just a couple of extra dollars then you totally should go to the farmer's market where the yolks are beautiful and dark, orangy and it's perfect soft scramble that's still nice and runny with some lightly poached shrimp that are just, get tossed in with a little dollop of sour cream and that, for me, is the ultimate meal because I think it comes together in less than 10 minutes. It's creamy when you make it right and when you're successful, the technique in there is not overcooking the eggs and it's just, it's so satisfying and decadent and I love shrimp. They just bring you a lot of joy.

Kerry Diamond:
Tell us how you do your soft scramble.

Antoni Porowski:
So glad you asked. It's so important. Okay.

Kerry Diamond:
Don't you get sad when someone serves you a dry scramble?

Antoni Porowski:
That's why I can't order even at diners anymore. I can't, it ruins everything because overcooked eggs are just, they become chewy. Over the pandemic, when I was in Austin, I would get obsessed with one thing and try to figure out how to make it perfectly and scrambled eggs became the thing. And this is actually thanks to my co-author, Mindy Fox. She taught me this. For every egg, I add just shy of a teaspoon of water and I try to keep them at room temp and then whisk them up. That steam apparently really helps when they're cooking and I don't salt them until later because it does change the flavor a little bit. And then, on a pan, a low to medium heat. If you have a gas range, I would recommend low because it tends to heat up really quickly. Butter the edges, make sure it goes all the way to the side, I don't want any crispy egg bits on the end.

And then, either with wooden or plastic chopsticks or the very thin part of a spatula, I curdle the hell out of it so that there's a really nice creamy, a very small curdle to it. Another thing, I know this sounds so obvious, but what I love about cooking is that we're constantly learning and I never have it perfectly and there's always some new technique. I never realized that you can literally lift your pan off of the heat if something is overcooking.

You have to stay your eyes on the pan because it can over cook and then just lift it if you feel like it's cooking too much. And then, you have to look into the future about a minute and a half and before you think they're ready, you remove them from the heat because they're going to continue cooking in that time because it's still hot af.

And then you can fold in, if you want to put in your chives or you want to put in shrimp or whatever it is you want to put in. Simple is always king for me and I keep it really nice and easy with just a bit of flake salt or I'll have some really nice zaatar, I'll throw that in there or I have this black magic oil from a restaurant called Suerte in Austin that I brought back eight jars of that's the most fantastic thing ever and I put two spoons of that. I'll reek of garlic for the rest of the day, but it just makes me really happy.

Kerry Diamond:
Okay. You have to tell us what makes this black magic oil magic.

Antoni Porowski:
Okay. Well, first of all, they don't sell it anymore-

Kerry Diamond:
No!

Antoni Porowski:
... so I convinced them to put it in jars, but apparently, they're going to bring it back. The restaurant is called Suerte and they do suadero tacos, which are braised for some ridiculous amount of time. And there is this black magic oil that just has, I believe it's fermented garlic, and then one of the chefs mentioned that there's some kind of a bean paste in it as well and it's just savory, it's really funky, it's really smoky and just the perfect amount of salt in that oil is fantastic. And then the oil just like dribbles down on between the little crevices of the little curdle of the soft scrambled eggs, it's just, it's heaven.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that sounds so good. A good scrambled egg is a magical thing because even if you don't have time to cook for yourself, whatever's in your fridge, you can throw into a scramble-

Antoni Porowski:
Absolutely.

Kerry Diamond:
... and there's a nice little healthy meal for yourself that you can literally make in two minutes.

Antoni Porowski:
And with some things like spinach, you definitely want to wilt it first so that you get rid of the excess moisture, but yeah, if you have leftovers, it's fantastic. That or a perfect French omelet that doesn't have any browning along the edges when it's just like really nice and smooth, it's like, what's better than that? What a wonderful way to start the day.

Kerry Diamond:
I've been trying to master that Julia Child omelet. Have you ever seen the footage of her making it where she just throws the pan back and forth across the stove top and just beats the heck out of the pan and the omelet. I don't know, it just magically comes together. I have not been able to recreate it, I've gotten close, but I will send you the footage. You can find it on YouTube.

Antoni Porowski:
Please.

Kerry Diamond:
Just search Julia Child omelet.

Antoni Porowski:
My comparison for the perfect omelet is, I always watch the YouTube video of Jacques Pépin and Julia, whenever he's showing her how to do it and with how you hold, as if you're holding soup and where you hold the pan and the omelet flips out. I always try to do my best Jacques Pépin impersonation when I make a French omelet.

Kerry Diamond:
All right. Which recipe do you think will be the most popular?

Antoni Porowski:
This book is definitely on the healthier side without being too precious. I don't omit butter or olive oil, but during the week, I like to not go too hard, but I also know just from research of Instagram posts and my first book that it's usually the decadent thing that gets a lot of excitement. There is a, it's like a turkey cheese soup, bear with me, it's the childhood soup that I was never allowed to have that I wanted to create with these little rafts with bread and butter, pickles and some melted cheese, like a French onion soup. And it's just tangy, it's acidic, it's cheesy, there's loads of, I love ground meat, ground turkey for me is, I have it two to three times a week because it's just so easy, it freezes well, you can make a lazy bolognese or a tomato sauce with it and it's just such a great ingredient.

I think that one's going to be a bit of a crowd pleaser, but the sheet pan chicken with burst in grapes and rosemary couldn't be easier to make. With the cookbook, they're like, if people who buy it get five e-cards for recipes and that's the one that I'm already seeing tagged a lot, so I feel like that one's going to be pretty popular just because it's so easy to come together and I feel like, for a lot of people, adding fruit to meat is a polarizing thing, but the grapes are just beautiful. And I love rosemary with grapes.

Kerry Diamond:
That likes so good. But wait, I want to go back to this turkey cheeseburger soup, because that sounds amazing.

Antoni Porowski:
Yes.

Kerry Diamond:
What is the base of it? Is it a chicken stock or what do you do?

Antoni Porowski:
Yeah, the base is a broth with just a bit of melted cheese and just a lot of ground turkey.

Kerry Diamond:
I do love the idea of hacking French onion soup. I'd never really thought about that, but there are a million things you could do.

Antoni Porowski:
Well, just the concept of having soup that's very hot and liquidy, to have something like dry, bubbly, crispy cheese on top, it's like cracking a crumb burly and it's so satisfying and then you make it underneath. Yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
When you hear me say French onion soup, does that make you cringe? Are you're like, it's not, you don't need to say French?

Antoni Porowski:
No, I always say French onion soup.

Kerry Diamond:
You do? Okay. I was just thinking, in Montreal they're like, "Why did they call them French fries? Why do they call it French onion soup? Why do they call it a French manicure?"

Antoni Porowski:
Soupe à l'oignon. Oh, my gosh, they don't call it ... You're right. Soupe à l'oignon gratinée. Yeah. I never even thought of that.

Kerry Diamond:
Anyway. Another discussion for another day, right? You mentioned Mindy. I was reading your acknowledgements and your credits and it seemed like you had an amazing group of women who helped with this book. Can you tell us about your team?

Antoni Porowski:
Yes. First and foremost, there's Mindy, who I love so much. I met her, well, virtually, during the first book, I was actually filming Queer Eye in Kansas City and we had a very short deadline for the book and I didn't have the opportunity to actually cook with her. I was chatting with her recently and I think the longest call we ever had in one shot was a little more than five hours. And I was trying to figure out what kind of a book I wanted to write and I would just basically dictate and she would take notes because I've never measured a single thing in my life except when I'm baking and everything is just handfuls and I love the word plop, whatever that means.

It's just like a small plop of this and then you plop it in. It's a noun and a verb in my book, apparently. So we created Antoni In The Kitchen on the phone basically and then we would divide and conquer. And for that book, I had my lovely friend, Beth Barden, she's a chef and restaurateur in Kansas city. She has a wonderful brunch spot called Succotash where she makes a heirloom tomato lemonade, which is my very favorite drink ever. It's so good. But anyway.

Kerry Diamond:
How does one make an heirloom tomato lemonade?

Antoni Porowski:
I don't know, but she would bring it to set and I've been on a lot of sets before where you get really nice meals, but that would literally bring a vintage, like one of those chicken feeders and just do the most beautiful salad. And of course, every vegetable was from her garden and she would feed 50 to 60 people and then she would have a cotton candy machine on the side that she bought at some yard sale for 20 bucks and every meal was always so special.

I just want it to be as close to her as possible, so some nights, we would cook together and then other times when I was shooting 10 to 12 hours, she would get a couple of recipes, I would come home and then we would tweak it and taste it and then recreate it together, so she worked with me there.

But for the second book, for Let's Do Dinner, Mindy is based in Portland, Maine, so she came out to New York, stayed here and she was in my kitchen with me every single day and it was the most used my kitchen's ever gotten and that was maybe some of the happiest months in recent history just because it was actually having the smell of food in my home and not running out and rushing off to speaking engagements and doing all kinds of different things. And we actually got to test together, which was what I always wanted to do.

She recruited our lovely culinary assistant Sadie, who's a new Yorker and she's the type of person who's like, you ask her for shrimp and she would just go to three different spots before she found the perfect shrimp and brought them back and I learned so much from her. It was just so nice being with somebody in the kitchen. It just felt like we were kids exploring and trying to figure things out because a lot of the recipes in Let's Do Dinner are variations of things that I make because a lot of, for me, a lot of it is just riffing.

And then a lot, we just got to create together and talk about like my time in Japan when we were filming Queer Eye, we were in Japan and that's how the ochazuke, which is another one of my favorites, not that you asked me for another recipe in the book, but I'll tell you. Just a little piece of broiled salmon over a bed of sticky rice and then it's basically covered in a wonderful, a green tea jasmine broth with just some scallions and that's it and it's like a spa. I can't describe it any other way. We just got to nerd out over things like that and I learned so much from Mindy. Now, I always put a tiny pinch of cayenne in almost everything.

It really does make a difference. The way that I always preach the gospel of always have a bowl of lemons and put lemon zest on literally everything, she taught me to do the same thing with cayenne and it just brings everything together and you don't even necessarily feel the heat. I love spice, but not when it's too overwhelming and it just overpowers the dish. So yeah, it was just so nice to, after the first book where it was just all phone calls, to actually cook together. It was really lovely and it was the cold months, so it was a lot of fun.

Kerry Diamond:
You brought up another great tip with that salmon dish. I learned this from someone when we did the Cherry Bombe cookbook and she used tea as a broth and I was like, I never thought of that before. So now, if I don't have chicken stock or I don't have some pre-made broth on hand, I'll just use some tea because I've always got a ton of tea. I've got seaweed tea, I've got green tea, I've got all these teas and it's amazing what you can do with some seafood, rice and tea.

Antoni Porowski:
Totally. My only tip there would be, don't make it too concentrated if it's caffeinated and if you're having it a dinner because you will not go to sleep.

Kerry Diamond:
Antoni, I have to ask what is up with Queer Eye.

Antoni Porowski:
It's a very good question. I can tell you that we've successfully completed a season, which I don't take completing a season for granted anymore because a year ago, March of 2020, we had started filming in Austin and we were one day shy of finishing our first episode of the season and production came to a halt and ended up staying in Austin for three months, fostered a dog, life changed, drove back to New York and then a year later, we went back to finish what we'd started.

I'm so glad that we went back to Austin and we were able to do that, but I can't say too much about the heroes, obviously, I will say, for anybody who's watched the show, I did have a snot cry season two. I believe it was the last episode, it was the first episode with Mama Tammye where we were in a church and she said some things that made me very emotional and I physically wanted to leave the scene, but I couldn't because we were indoors.

Well, I had a part two of that meltdown because the producers, especially with me, they don't tell me very much because I'm very sensitive and I get very affected by people's kindness, especially people who do things for others. We had a Yoko-San in Tokyo who ran a hospice after her sister passed away from cancer and she didn't want anyone to live through what her sister lived through, so she gave up her own bed and slept under her dining table so she could take care of people who were in this very difficult chapter of their lives.

But we had another episode like that where I just completely lost my mind. I can't say anything more about it. I don't know when the season's coming out, although I really hope it's going to be somewhere around the holidays or the beginning of next year, but ... I know, I wish I had more information for you. They also don't tell me very much because I'm very bad at secrets, so it's better that they don't tell me.

Kerry Diamond:
I will not press you for information because I would imagine you've also signed a lot that says you can't talk about anything, but we're all really looking forward to the next season, so I'm happy to hear that there is a season in the can. You mentioned you being sensitive and one of the things I wanted to ask you, I know mental health is very important to you, LGBTQ+ rights are very important to you.

Antoni Porowski:
In terms of LGBTQIA+ rights, plenty going on in this country as well, but Poland has really taken a lot of my attention and focus recently, there was the first pride protest ever in a Northern town called Bialystok about a year and a half ago. And on Twitter, people were tagging me because a lot of these protestors who were protesting very peacefully were getting bags of flour and rocks thrown at them and they were putting my name up. That was an awakening for me. I didn't realize how bad it really was and it's really gotten so much worse since.

Kerry Diamond:
Tell me about Equiversity Foundation. What's that all about?

Antoni Porowski:
Yeah. Equiversity is basically, they call it a human rights foundation because if you name anything, whether it's gay or LGBTQ in Poland, it basically gets kiboshed. It's a mix of the Catholic church and the current government in power, which is a far right wing government. On paper, it's a human rights foundation, but with a focus on LGBTQIA+ rights and it's tied into Ali Forney here in New York and also working now with All Out, which is a organization worldwide that actually teaches people how to protest peacefully and safely and get some lawyers when they need, whenever they're basically in trouble for doing the right thing.

It was started by Agnieszka Holland, who's a very famous, accomplished director and her daughter, Mary Klamassa, who's a writer, a singer and songwriter, and Anja Rubik, who's activist and an a model and they were all a big part of…, which is the women's strike in Poland, which has gained a lot of popularity over the past few months. Basically, abortion is fully illegal under almost any circumstance in Poland right now, so they wanted to start an LGBTQIA+ foundation and reached out to me.

It really felt like a perfect fit, so that's been something that I've been really involved with and I've always had such a weird relationship with my Polish heritage because as a kid, it was like, it was fine to be Polish. It wasn't awesome, it wasn't terrible, I wasn't ashamed of anything, but it was like, okay. And then when I lived in a pretty rural area in West Virginia for four years, bringing…, bringing cabbage to school and bringing hunter stew weren't things that were really cool and my name was kind of foreign and suddenly, I felt this weird shame about where I came from, so I'd completely forgotten Polish. My parents were furious. They sent me back to Montreal, I started taking Polish lessons. I worked in a Polish restaurant that my father worked at when he was my age, then my sisters, my cousins, it's like a rite of passage. If you're ever in Montreal, go to Stash Cafe. The best perogies, a little dough, a lot of meat, their hunter stew has a lot of meat in it, which a lot of restaurants just fill it up with a lot of cabbage. But anyway.

And then I met young people there who were Polish who were not embarrassed to be Polish and who were actually kind of proud. And with Equiversity, I feel like it's an opportunity to just feel connected with this country that I wasn't born in, but that I definitely do feel a very strong attachment to and a responsibility to speak up for.

Halfway throughout the pandemic, I started taking Polish lessons again with this really awesome tutor in Warsaw. I'm still trying to figure out what that is, but I do want to have more of a role in Poland. I feel like I have a responsibility to do that. Did I ever think that I would a few years ago? Definitely not, but I think that's one of the gifts and the responsibilities that come with the position that I have with being on Queer Eye and discussing visibility here. I have a responsibility to do that for Polish people in and outside of Poland as well.

Kerry Diamond:
How can folks get involved with Equiversity?

Antoni Porowski:
Well, it's a nonprofit. They're taking donations. Their Instagram page is very informative. It updates you on basically everything that's going on and other groups that you can contact for, it's donation-based now. We're really just starting out and just trying to figure out, there was an op-ed in the Washington post recently and we're just working on just getting the word out there.

I think the first thing is always, like it is with everything, if you're not familiar with it, if you're drawn to it for whatever reason, whether it's personal or you have somebody in your family who's LGBTQIA or you just believe that everybody deserves equality, which is what we should all believe, I think, it's an obvious, but not in Poland right now.

Then, just educate yourself, just learn about what's going on. I think with me, especially, anger really helped me when I learned that there was a Polish newspaper, a very popular one that was actually passing out LGBT-free zones with a big X on it where businesses were encouraged to put stickers in their windows telling LGBTQ+ people that they were not welcome there. I can only imagine how that would affect me if I were really young and I was questioning my sexuality and I walked into my favorite coffee shop to get my little pain au chocolat and my cappuccino and I saw that I wasn't welcomed there. That affects your whole life. It affects how you feel about yourself and you're feeling welcome in your own country. But I would just encourage people to educate themselves about it.

Kerry Diamond:
The world right now, there are so many things happening around the world and in our own country, it's overwhelming and it's hard to know what to do first and how to make a difference, so thank you for what you're doing.

Antoni Porowski:
Yeah. Of course. It's tricky because I went through this period of the pandemic where I would spend 10 minutes on CNN and then I would spend 10 minutes on Fox and I would just get so angry and so upset that I decided, no, I need to start doing what I did when I was a kid and go to the BBC. Yes, everything that's going on in this country is very real. I'm not diminishing that in any way, shape or form, but there's a whole world out there. There are a lot of things going on. And the good side of that is that it gives me perspective that there are also good and bad things going on and it's not just in this country. I'm not at the center of this thing, that there is a whole world out there, but at the same time, it does get overwhelming when it's like, shit, there's some really awful stuff going on everywhere. I really struggle with that balance. I really have to limit how much I look at the news because on one end, I don't want to be ignorant, I want to be knowledgeable about everything that's going on, but if I look at it too much, that really, it affects my mental health and then I'm doubling up on therapy sessions for the week.

Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Well, Antoni, thank you for being a bright spot in this crazy world that we're in right now.

Antoni Porowski:
I'm trying. Thank you.

Kerry Diamond:
All right. I know we don't have much time left with you, so let's do a speed round. I see you drinking something, coffee or tea?

Antoni Porowski:
La Colombe cold brew over ice, black.

Kerry Diamond:
Got it. A treasured cookbook in your collection?

Antoni Porowski:
Nigella Lawson's Feast.

Kerry Diamond:
The most used kitchen implement?

Antoni Porowski:
Flat wooden spoon, tongs and my microplane.

Kerry Diamond:
Love it. Fully endorse all three of those. Do you wear an apron or are you no apron?

Antoni Porowski:
I never wear an apron because I'm not a chef and I respect chefs and I know them and whenever someone refers to me as a chef, it just makes me uncomfortable and I'm like, "No, I'm a home cook." And I feel like the apron makes it too official and I love, apparently, I love to mess up my white t-shirts because that's all I ever wear, especially when I'm making a red sauce.

Kerry Diamond:
Have you gotten really good at mise en place?

Antoni Porowski:
So much better over time. The best lesson was living in a studio apartment in Clinton Hill for seven years and literally having one drawer in my kitchen and the little Ikea island, so I had to figure it out.

Kerry Diamond:
What's your kitchen footwear of choice?

Antoni Porowski:
White Adidas, tube socks.

Kerry Diamond:
How about music in the kitchen?

Antoni Porowski:
Oh.

Kerry Diamond:
Yes or no?

Antoni Porowski:
Yes. Always yes. I have my Apple HomePod and I just play music. If it's, Maggie Rogers is always good. I've been listening to Taylor Swift's last two albums.

Kerry Diamond:
Oh, but they make me cry. I can't listen to those while I cook. Don't they make you cry?

Antoni Porowski:
Not while I'm cooking, but it just puts me in a mood. I'm a happy sad. I'm a sad boy. My comfort zone is there. I wear the t-shirts on the show, but I do love The National, anything moody like that and I love some Miles Davis as well, Kind Of Blue, Pharaoh, if I'm really feeling it and if I'm alone in the apartment, I blast some Miles Davis, but those, I play on my record player though.

Kerry Diamond:
Ooh. Okay.

Antoni Porowski:
And I have to go change it every 20 minutes with my dirty hands.

Kerry Diamond:
Nice. I was going to say, you got to keep your hands clean, yeah.

Antoni Porowski:
It's a mess.

Kerry Diamond:
But still.

Antoni Porowski:
Yeah. But I make it work.

Kerry Diamond:
Favorite food as a child?

Antoni Porowski:
Favorite food as a child, frico.

Kerry Diamond:
The melted cheese?

Antoni Porowski:
With any type of cheese. Melted cheese, but I would put it on a pan and there was this cheese that we used to get at Costco. We're a big Costco family. We weren't allowed to have Cheese Whiz, but there's this thing, I don't know if they still make it, it's called Imperial Cheese. It's a red tube with a black lid and it was a sharp processed cheddar and I would, my frico, I would literally put it in the microwave on a plate and it would get really crispy and the oils would separate and then I would roll it up and just eat it like a little, like a Pirouline. It's so good.

Kerry Diamond:
That sounds great. A dream travel destination?

Antoni Porowski:
I would say maybe to experience the great migration in Africa or, since I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Nazca lines in Peru. I think it would be Peru. I've never been to South America and I would love to go.

Kerry Diamond:
All right, last question. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?

Antoni Porowski:
You know what? Because I'm thinking about her now and she just brings me so much comfort, I think it would be Nigella.

Kerry Diamond:
I wouldn't mind being trapped on a desert island with Nigella.

Antoni Porowski:
Yeah. I feel like we'd have a lot of laughs.

Kerry Diamond:
You would, you would. You'd probably eat well, although, I don't know if Nigella is going to be the one to go spearfish or do those things.

Antoni Porowski:
I would do that. I'm not saying, I was going to say I can do that. I definitely cannot, but I would figure it out. I would do anything for her.

Kerry Diamond:
Good to know. All right. Well, Antoni, this was a real pleasure. Your book is really wonderful and I'm so thrilled I got to talk to you, finally.

Antoni Porowski:
Thank you. It was really nice getting to know you.

Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Antoni Porowski for joining us. Be sure to check out Antoni's new book, Let's Do Dinner, at your favorite local bookstore.

Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting our show. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Want some more Cherry Bombe in your life? Sign up for our newsletter at cherrybombe.com.

Radio Cherry Bombe is recorded at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Thank you to Joseph Hasan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios and to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu.

Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the bombe.

Moira from Schitt’s Creek:
Oh, the next step is to fold in the cheese.