Dorie Greenspan and Umber Ahmed Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hey everybody, you are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, I'm your host Kerry Diamond. For today's episode, we're bringing you a special recording from the Cherry Bombe cooks and books festival, held last month at the new ACE hotel, in Brooklyn. We've got Baker's Dorie Greenspan and Umber Ahmad in conversation. Dorie is the author of 14 cookbooks, including her newest, Baking with Dorie, which just came out the other week.
Umber is the baker and owner of Mah-Ze-Dahr, a wonderful bakery with locations in New York City, Washington DC, and Arlington Virginia. Today's conversation is presented by Kerrygold throughout this holiday season. Thanks to Kerrygold, we'll be bringing you special episodes of Radio Cherry Bombe with some of your favorite bakers. No doubt, many of you will be using a lot of butter and cheese for your holiday baking, I know I certainly will. And because of that, I thought you'd like to know that Kerrygold's butter and cheeses are made with milk from grassfed cows. Raised the natural way, free of growth hormones, and nurtured on small family-run Irish dairy farms.
Ireland's mild climate and abundant rainfall provide natural irrigation for the land and an ideal environment for the grassfed herds to graze. I've been to some of their family farms and was fortunate to meet a few of the folks who are part of the Kerrygold farm co-op. They're special people and Kerrygold is a special product. So check out, Kerrygold's all natural cheeses and richly flavorful pure Irish butter, the next time you're at your favorite supermarket or cheese shop. Or visit Kerrygoldusa.com and stay tuned for more bakers on Radio Cherry Bombe, who will no doubt inspire you to get baking over the holidays.
Speaking of inspiring bakers, a very Cherry Bombe Friendsgiving kicks off this week and our all star pie panel is back. It's taking place Thursday, the 11th. So head over to cherrybombe.com to RSVP and don't miss any of the fun things we have planned. We kick things off on the 10th with Drew Barrymore. Our friendsgiving festivities are free and open to all. Thanks to our sponsors, Kerrygold, Sanpellegrino, Sir Kensington's, California Prunes, Sequoia Grove Winery and Cakebread Cellars. And now here's Dorie Greenspan and Umber Ahmad in conversation, from cooks and books.
Umber Ahmad:
Hi, good afternoon. My name is Umber Ahmad, I'm the founder of Mah-Ze-Dahr bakery, and most importantly, I am a huge diehard fan of Dorie.
Dorie Greenspan:
No, no. Most importantly, she's a phenomenal baker. Phenomenal.
Umber Ahmad:
Thank you. Thank you. I accredit that to you.
Dorie Greenspan:
And good person.
Umber Ahmad:
Thank you. I think being a good person is a big part of the kind of food that you make. You know, Dorie and I have had a chance to speak a few times over the years and every time I always learn a little bit more about Dorie and the conversation that we had about Dorie's new book, which is Baking with Dorie, took a couple of interesting turns. And I would love for you to tell us a little bit about your 14th book, because you told me that this wasn't actually what you started writing, and this is how it came out. So maybe talk to us a little bit about that.
Dorie Greenspan:
This is like the unplanned child. When I finished my last book, which was Everyday Dorie, that came out in 2018, I thought that's it, 13 books, baker's dozen, my work here has done. And then I was in Santa Barbara and I had a scone that was so beautiful that I did what I think we all do, I took a picture, I put it on Instagram and in a flash Ann Mah, the author of a couple of cookbooks and also Lost Vintage, Ann sent me a message and said, this is what you should do, you should write a savory baking book. I thought, oh, even now as I say it, I feel like that little tingle that you get when you get a good idea. And so I started working on a proposal and it was going to be savory baking, and my editor Sarah is here.
The proposal that I sent in is not the book that's here. As I worked, the book kept getting kind of sweeter and sweeter and sweet. I just couldn't stay away from desserts. So, there's a chapter called salty side up and that's savory. And there are a bunch of recipes that kind of can't make up their mind, whether they're sweet or savory. And those are some of my favorite. But yeah, the book just changed and changed and it really wasn't, and this is unfortunately true of me almost with almost all my books, I didn't know what it really was until it was close to the end.
Umber Ahmad:
Can you talk a little bit about how your techniques have gotten a little simpler, but your ingredients have become a little bit more thoughtful and kind of quirky in some ways.
Dorie Greenspan:
So I find myself liking things that are simpler. Yeah. And a little bit plainer. I love flavor. I'm really interested in texture. And I like when those are, that's what shines in. I mean, it's easy to decorate something. It's easy to add more ingredients or more flavors or more layers to something. But I love when you can just coax, kind of like pull the best out of ingredients and just not use so many of them. And so an ingredient gets to star. So yeah, everything is simpler in this book. Not basic. Yeah, basic. Some of things are really basic, but simpler.
Umber Ahmad:
Everything that you do, it's very authentic to you. And it's things that you really stand by, which I love, but it sounds like you take a lot of your inspiration from things that you hear from other people or suggestions that you get. So where did a lot of the inspiration come from for this book?
Dorie Greenspan:
So this book was an odd one because it was half the before times and half COVID. So the cover recipe is the Lisbon chocolate cake. And it was something that I had on our, actually in our last minutes in Lisbon, we were headed to the airport, we stopped for coffee, I had this cake, I took a picture of it and knew that I wanted to make something like it. There's a cake, when I was in Stockholm, I met a Swedish pastry chef who taught me about Fika, which is we should all have Fika, you stop three times a day to have coffee and something great. I mean like, why don't we do that?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, we should do that.
Dorie Greenspan:
And so I have a recipe from her. I have the Roman breakfast cake that you mentioned, it's not the recipe, but it's what I remember loving about a cake that I had every morning that we were in Rome.
And so when you're out in the world, inspiration is easy to come by. You go to a new market or you meet someone or you see something in a pastry shop. Or when you're looking at the four walls of your kitchen and your fabulous son and daughter-in-law are there, and they won't even let you go to the supermarket, they stayed with us through COVID, which I'm so grateful, but they wouldn't let us out. So you can't even walk the aisles of stop and shop and see a new ingredient. And so the second half of the book's inspiration came from cooking for my family, baking for my family, thinking about what I wanted to make for them that would make this really difficult time, memorable in a good way.
Umber Ahmad:
And it shows because a lot of this feels very soulful and feels very sort of shareable, which I think you can sort of see time and time again. One of the things that I always say about Dorie is that she is relevant without being trendy, which is a very hard thing to do in our industry. Because everybody's looking for the next, something that has sprinkles inside of it or something that's a mishmash of two different things you wouldn't expect. And Dorie's like, I'm going to do something that you're going to want to go back to again and again. And I really think that this, almost like any of the other books is that, which is fantastic.
Dorie Greenspan:
Umber, you look at me like I'm supposed to say something other than thank you. But somebody asked me, I said the other day to someone that I have a recipe tester and they said, you have one tester. And I said, yes, I have one tester, but I have many tasters. And she said, do you pay attention to your tasters. And I said, well, I pay attention to some of them, the ones whose, I mean, it's kind of one sided, the one whose tastes I really like. I said in the end, and this was particularly true in this book because I was confined, working on a book means working on something that's really of yourself. That sounds so selfish, but I have to trust that not everybody's going to like what I like, but that some people will, and that the taste has to be the taste that I like.
The recipes have to be the kinds of recipes that I like to make. That I want to teach other people to make, encourage other people to make. But I do like when, I don't want all the recipes to be the same and I want a recipe to have a surprise, a little something unexpected, something that you, you look at the chocolate chip cookie and you think, I've seen this one before and then you taste it, and you think, ah, but I've never tasted one like this before. So it's like holding onto the classics.
Umber Ahmad:
Just walk us through when you talk about an inspiration, you take a photograph of something or you see an ingredient or something like that, what then happens? You sort of plant the seed. Can you walk us through what it means to develop a recipe? How does that get to a recipe that you then start tasting and testing?
Dorie Greenspan:
You know when I spoke to you a week or so ago, you promised me you wouldn't ask a question. I couldn't answer.
Umber Ahmad:
I don't remember that, but okay.
Dorie Greenspan:
Zoë and I are going to be in conversation, Zoë François and I are going to be in conversation later this week at this Smithsonian and by the way, don't ask me something, I don't know.
Umber Ahmad:
If you haven't seen Zoë's show, you must watch, it's a binge worthy. I mean, you will swoon, and you will laugh, and you'll cry and it's absolutely phenomenal.
Dorie Greenspan:
And you'll meet her whole family.
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, we're hopelessly in love with you. It's fantastic. Congratulations. It's really lovely.
Dorie Greenspan:
So, but I'm not off the hook.
Umber Ahmad:
I always think that in a previous life Dorie was a hockey goalie, because she just deflects, deflects, deflects but I was like, no, I'm going to make you answer these questions.
Dorie Greenspan:
So an easy one would the Lisbon cake. So I saw it, in the old days. So, this is my 30th anniversary as a cookbook author. My first book came out in 91.
Umber Ahmad:
That's crazy to think, 1991 was 30 years ago.
Dorie Greenspan:
That's what I said.
Umber Ahmad:
That's insane.
Dorie Greenspan:
I know, like yesterday, right? And so in those days I didn't have a computer in my pocket. I didn't have account. None of us. Well some of you weren't even around. So now life is a little easier. You take a picture and you have an idea that, and so I took a picture and I could see how dense the bottom layer was. So it's a cake that's dense, but moist, it's almost brownish. And then it's got, at least my version does, I don't know what the real one has, mine has a whipped ganache. I don't think theirs was a moose, but I couldn't be sure. And it struck me, the cocoa on top really struck me because it was its own layer. It wasn't just a sprinkling for decoration or for color.
But it was there. You felt it, you taste the bitterness was there. So I had a lot to go on. I also had nothing because I didn't know how it was made. Was it flour? Was it a flourless mix? I lived part-time in Paris and we went to Lisbon from Paris. So we got home and I started working on this the following day. And I keep saying my second layer, is it the right color? How did she get it out of her pan? She didn't use a pan. She used a cake ring. I can't use a cake ring because most home bakers don't have cake rings. What am I going to do if I make a sling? I mean, because it's not only the flavor, the ingredients, the technique, you have to be able to make these recipes work in homes everywhere. So I began working in Paris. I got the cake that I really liked in Paris, but nothing that I do in Paris can be counted as real.
Umber Ahmad:
Why is that?
Dorie Greenspan:
Because the ingredients are so different. My oven is different. I love my oven in Paris, I'd like to take it here, but it's different. And so I bring flour with me to Paris so I can do preliminary tests. But everything else is that fabulous, extra rich butter, chocolate that, so everything has to come home and start all over again.
But when it comes out, it's so exciting and it's so rewarding and I feel so, I've done a lot of recipes. I haven't lost the excitement when something comes out. My husband says, I talk to myself all the time, but my husband says his favorite thing, and he hears some things that, I'm not always happy, but sometimes he'll walk by and I'll say "Yes" or I'll say, "Ah, got it." And there's that excitement.
Umber Ahmad:
I actually talk to the food when it comes out. I'm like, "Oh, these pretty girls, who's a nice girl." People are not sure if I'm talking to my dog or talking to scones, but I think they hear you. I do. And then when you get that moment, that moment of like, "Ah, this is it."
Dorie Greenspan:
It's very exciting and then, because it is 2021, it's super exciting to then see somebody else make it. To be able to see people making our food and enjoying it and try, it's a real thrill.
Umber Ahmad:
How has social media changed things for you? Because you were making these, doing cookbooks and creating recipes pre-social media before you could even know if anybody was making them or not. So now that social media plays such a big part of how we experience food and how we discover food, how has that changed you? Or has it changed the recipes in any way?
Dorie Greenspan:
I don't think it's changed the recipes. If I look back, I feel like I've changed. As I said, I think my things have gotten simpler, but I think you can tell that those are my recipes all through the years. But the excitement of seeing, when the internet was new way back when kids once upon a time, but I saw, two experiences that just knocked me out, I saw a recipe of mine that someone had made and then someone had linked to it and then somebody else had talked. And I said to my son, I can't believe it. He said ma, that's why they call it the web. But the first time there was a chat. They weren't called chats, I forgot what they were called, but it was a food forum called eGullet, and I looked at it and someone had made a cake of mine and I had never seen, I was in my office and I was crying. I was so touched by somebody, working on one of my recipes, making it and being so happy with it that they wanted to show it to others. I still feel that.
Umber Ahmad:
That's amazing.
Dorie Greenspan:
Yeah. I still feel that.
Umber Ahmad:
That's so special. So in one of your books you said, start on page six because that was the [crosstalk 00:18:17]
Dorie Greenspan:
oh, now you're going to ask me. I don't know.
Umber Ahmad:
I am going to ask it. Oh, don't ask me.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, wait a second. You said you made a couple of recipes. Where'd you start?
Umber Ahmad:
I started with the Roman breakfast cake.
Dorie Greenspan:
You did.
Umber Ahmad:
I did. Has anyone started cooking out of, baking out of this book yet? I'm not going to direct anybody in any particular place, but I did start with the Roman cake.
Dorie Greenspan:
Is that right? Is that it? Turn back.
Umber Ahmad:
Which one?
Dorie Greenspan:
I think, yeah, there it is.
Umber Ahmad:
So it's this. This is one of the things I love about Dorie's books. The food legitimately looks like this. It isn't one of those, sometimes you get a cookbook and you make it, and you're like, how is that? Because it literally looks nothing like this. And this, you make this and it's just stunning. I mean, and it's a real credit to you, Dorie that you have tested these recipes again and again and again, because I think that is, correct me if I'm wrong, when you're working on a cookbook, that is one of the most sort of somewhat mundane, but challenging things is to do it over and over and over again.
Dorie Greenspan:
It's not mundane. It's really the heart of making a cookbook. Working on the recipes, getting them so that they're just the way I want them. And then when I send them to be tested, I send the, I always call it the formula I don't know what else to call it, but the ingredients and then the directions written as close to finished as I can get them, so that they can be tested for the language. And then sometimes they come back and have to be tested again.
Umber Ahmad:
So there are people in the audience that are thinking about wanting to write their own cookbook, are wanting to sort of venture into this world. What advice would you give them?
Dorie Greenspan:
So I have a box of note cards with quotes from Julia Child. and I sent a book plate off to someone yesterday and I just pulled the top note card off. And it said famous quote from Julia, I won't get a word for word, it's find something that you're passionate about and stick with it for the rest of your life. If you're going to write a cookbook that has to be something that you're really passionate about. I don't think, I mean, one could write a cookbook because you think you have enough Instagram followers to be a best seller. You could write a cookbook because you think it would be fun. But I think you can really only write cookbook that will mean something to you and to others for years to come. If it comes from what you really care about. And if you are really ready to put in the work. Takes a long time to write a cookbook.
Umber Ahmad:
How long does it, I mean, it probably takes you a lot less time now, but how long do you think it takes you, from idea to being done?
Dorie Greenspan:
I'm slow and I've gotten faster and I'm still slow. So this is three years. Others are faster, but you are going to be living with it. You're going to wake up in the morning and it's going to be in your kitchen and you want to be happy to see it every day. So it has to be something you really want to do.
Umber Ahmad:
So speaking of things that you really love and want to stick with, you have a granddaughter now.
Dorie Greenspan:
Oh, I thought you'd never mention her.
Umber Ahmad:
And Gemma just had a birthday.
Dorie Greenspan:
Gemma had a birthday.
Umber Ahmad:
Yep. And tell us what happened at the birthday.
Dorie Greenspan:
So Gemma is, I'm going to see her this afternoon. Gemma is 15 months old, she's fabulous. And she had no sugar. She eats everything and enjoys food and has a great appetite, but it hadn't had sugar and Linling, my daughter-in-law said, we're waiting for you to make her a cake for her birthday.
Umber Ahmad:
That's a lot of pressure.
Dorie Greenspan:
It's a lot of pressure. It's also a great joy. First it was the pressure. And then I thought I've made birthday cakes for Joshua her son, of course, all through his life. And every time I do, and I still make him birthday cakes, I feel like, I never kept a journal, but I feel like making the cake is like keeping the journal. You make the cake and you think back to the year that's passed. It's very lovely to make a birthday day cake for someone you love.
Gemma's cake did feel a little fraught. First bit of sugar. I mean, when I made Joshua's first cake, I loaded it down with Grand Marnier because I figured he was never going to eat it. Yeah, I figured the grownups were coming with their little kids. So this was the cake for the grownups. And I made a little cookie for the kids.
So for Gemma, I made a baby cake. I used a mini muffin tin. I made a cake kind of based on [inaudible 00:23:40] it was white. She loves strawberries. If you showed her a strawberry, her eyes lit up and her hand went out. And so I put a fresh strawberry in it, the top was dipped in white chocolate. And which, I mean, I tried a whole bunch of things, I tried some strawberry powder, I hated the color, I put it in the cake.
Umber Ahmad:
It's a weird pink color. Strawberry powder doesn't work like you hope it would. It's like a weird, like medicinal color.
Dorie Greenspan:
I had never used it before and yeah just that look, but then I thought I could put it in the icing, in the white chocolate dip, but that wasn't so plain, white chocolate dip sprinkles on the side, so pretty. She didn't like it. She didn't like it. I lied to some people and told them that she loved it, but the truth was she didn't.
We were out for lunch. It was 94 degrees, so I'm going to blame it on the weather. And the little cakes had sat on the table until it was appropriate to be dessert, and I had bought like teensy, teensy, little candles, and we had to find somebody who had a match. I think it was the texture. So she touched it and it kind of stuck to her fingers and she found the strawberry, she ate strawberry. But so that birthday cake was not her first taste of sugar. But it's okay.
Umber Ahmad:
You have many more birthdays, so that's good. Wonderful. So I would love to open up the opportunity for any of you that have questions for Dorie, if there's anyone who wants to ask something of her?
Question 1:
Who are your favorite cookbook authors like baking or cooking, who do you really like? How do you get your inspiration?
Dorie Greenspan:
Thank you. So there are some favorite cookbook authors right here. We have Zoe, we have Jesse. Who else is here? I grew up on Maida Heatter. Does anybody know who she is? Yeah. A few nods. So Maida Heatter, she taught me to bake. I didn't go to cooking school. I didn't go to pastry school. I wanted to, but I got a late start. Also I got a late start baking, but an early start in the field. There were not women in the kitchen when I wanted to work.
So I learned from Maida Heatter's books. There was a translation of the French pastry chef guest on the notes books. And I learned from that and I wrote, I still have, you can see the notes, what I made, when, for whom, what I didn't like, how I wanted to change it. These days there are so many good people. I think the quality of cookbooks is really high now. There are so many people who are so creative in the way they use ingredients. And I'm cooking from a lot of new people and cuisines that I hadn't cooked from before. And I'm cooking a lot of Asian food.
Umber Ahmad:
Maybe it's a little bit of a segue, but you have this Miso-maple...
Dorie Greenspan:
The Miso-maple cake?
Umber Ahmad:
Yes. I'm curious about sort of the similar question. What was the process behind coming up with that recipe?
Dorie Greenspan:
It doesn't sound appealing, but I made Miso-maple salmon for dinner and it glazed and I thought that can be a cake. I love come combinations that have an edge where they're sweet, desserts have to be sweet. I don't want them to be too sweet, but a dessert without sugar is not dessert. There has to be some sweetness. But I like when the flavors kind of hover kind of teeter-totter on the fence between sweet and savory.
And so the Miso-maple loaf is in the breakfast chapter. This is the first time I've been able to have a breakfast chapter, and well, since baking for my home to yours, I love breakfast baking. And so it's in the breakfast chapter and it has a jam glaze and it's really nice with butter and jam. It's great toasted. But it's also nice with cheese. It's just that kind of like with cheddar, it just tips. And I love when I can play kind of sweet and savory against one another, like that.
Umber Ahmad:
I feel like that's become more prevalent in recent years. I also think that we as a population have a somewhat more sort of sophisticated or refined palette, where we can appreciate the things more than I think we used to. And we're looking for those kind of fun, sweet salty or sweet savory balances.
Dorie Greenspan:
But we can also get the ingredients.
Umber Ahmad:
Yes, that's true.
Dorie Greenspan:
Right. So you go to the supermarket and there's spelt flour, and there are two kinds of rye and miso is white or yellow or red. It's exciting. And it gives us more, those of us who write recipes, gives us more to play with and more opportunities to introduce new combinations to people.
Umber Ahmad:
And what kind of flours have you been playing with recently?
Dorie Greenspan:
So I've been using primarily my all purpose flour, but I've done recipes and they're here with spelt, with rye, with corn. You said something that made me think of Julia again, Child, when you so kindly said that I introduced new ingredients. I think that those of us who love food, who love to cook, who love to bake, who want to share what we do. We're always curious. We always want to know what's that like? What if I put these two things together? And the thing that made me think of Julia, when you said that is, when I worked with Julia it was in Cambridge, in her house, and she had a computer problem. A computer problem, I wrote the book baking with Julia that accompanied the PBS series. And so I was there when it was being shot. And I said this out loud the other day, and somebody said, it's a humble brag. I'm on speed dial on Julia's phone, in the Smithsonian, in her kitchen.
Dorie Greenspan:
That's kind of amazing.
Umber Ahmad:
That's a life goal for sure. Oh my gosh.
Dorie Greenspan:
So, you know, like James Beard awards, blah, blah. I'm on speed dial. So Julia's computer, which had a screen saver that said creme fresh was, something was wrong. And my husband was on set that day and she said, "Michael, go upstairs and see what you can do with the computer." And Michael grabbed one of the camera guys. He said, I'm not touching Julia's computer alone. He said, come lets see we'll do. And so the two of them are like under her desk, playing with things. And Julia comes in and says, I want to know what you're doing. And the camera guy said, we're just fixing it. It's just fine.
And Julia said, "I need to know what you're doing. I need to understand what you're doing. If you leave, how am I going to know how to fix my own computer?" But it was that kind of curiosity of her wanting to know. When we were working on this series, she called me one morning and she said, "we don't have anybody using a bread machine." This is 1995. I said, "I don't think we need anyone who uses a bread machine." She said, "Have you ever used one?" I said, "No." She said, "Well, then you can't say that." She said, "Do you own one?" I said, "No." She said, "I don't either. I'm going to buy one today. And I think should too."
Umber Ahmad:
And did you?
Dorie Greenspan:
I did. I gave mine away. Julia used hers. She didn't like the bread she got from it, but she liked that it would knead the bread for her and she could proof it. But that was that curiosity, that wanting to know. I think it's one of the great things that I took away from working with her. And I think that's what we, who cook and who bake and who are interested in food. We want to be curious.
Question 2:
Hi Dorie. So for so many people baked goods bring comfort. For you, you've spent the better part of your adult life writing about baked goods. What baked good brings you comfort, or maybe sparks some kind of emotion or joy?
Dorie Greenspan:
I love bread. I love brioche. I love the way when you make brioche, how it stretches. I love that kind of texture. I like plain cakes. So the Roman breakfast cake, I love a loaf cake. And this has changed over the years. I'm liking cakes that are made with oil. I'm liking the texture of them, the kind of bounce that you get. It's funny because the crust looks a little tight sometimes, but it's got a little sponge to it. A pie. I'm easy. Yeah. I think I'm easy.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Dorie Greenspan and Umber Ahmad for their delightful conversation. Check out Dorie's latest book, Baking with Dorie at your favorite local bookstore. And you can visit Umber’s Mah-Ze-Dahr bakeries in New York City, Washington DC, and Arlington Virginia. You can also visit Umbers website, mahzedahrbakery.com and order some bake goods for yourself, or a loved one.
Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting this episode. If you'd like to hear more from Dorie on Thursday, November 16th, she's doing a virtual chat with Cherry Bombe's membership director, Donna Yen. It's presented by bookshop Santa Cruz. So head over to bookshop Santacruz.com to sign up for this free virtual event and tell Donna, we said hi. Also, don't forget a very Cherry Bombe friendsgiving kicks off this Wednesday with Drew Barry Moore. We've got all the details at cherrybombe.com.
Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe magazine. Thank you to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.