834: Fall Cooking and Bitter Flavors with Genevieve Ko and Alexina Anatole

The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

This episode of The Splendid Table features two deep dives into culinary flavors and techniques. First, Genevieve Ko provides practical advi

Key takeaways

• Genevieve Ko suggests roasting large wedges of cabbage to transform them into a substantial main dish.
• The quality of frozen fish is heavily dependent on how quickly it was frozen at sea to prevent large ice crystals from breaking cell walls.
• Braises, stews, and soups are ideal for freezing because their high moisture content helps maintain texture upon thawing.
• Alexina Anatole argues that bitterness serves as a 'base note' that makes dishes more compelling and prevents palate fatigue.
• Modern agricultural breeding of vegetables to be milder may inadvertently reduce the nutritional polyphenol content.

Main topics

• Fall cooking techniques
• Freezing and thawing seafood
• Managing seasonal produce

Notable quotes

Bitterness is like the hidden flavor ninja.

Conclusion

The episode offers valuable culinary wisdom for both practical kitchen

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) Support for this show comes from Feeding America. Great things are not built alone. They require the right pieces coming together for a purpose. And right now, as families face rising food costs, it's important to come together and end hunger, hand in hand. Farmers, advocates, donors, volunteers. When we connect our actions, we aren't just separating parts. We are a movement building a system that feeds millions. This Hunger Action Month assembly is required. You can give now, volunteer, or speak up at feedingamerica.org slash hungeractionmonth. Speaker 4 (0:42) Hey, it's Francis, and this week it's an episode from last year with Genevieve Ko from The New York Times taking your fall cooking questions. Check it out. I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM. Speaker 4 (1:01) Fall unofficially came early this year, in my apartment at least. For me, it's fall again when I can bear to get both a pot of water going for pasta and turn on the oven. So it's been nice in my kitchen for the last few weeks. I have not been concerned about layering on an apron over my shirt. And when we put out a call for listener questions about fall cooking, it seems a lot of you are feeling the same way. To help me take those calls today, we have my friend and deputy editor of New York Times Cooking, Genevieve Ko. Genevieve has always been a pro's pro. I remember, you know, geez, decades ago now, when I was a writer for the late great magazine Gourmet. She was in the test kitchen, and our editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichel, would constantly be asking, hey, have you tried Genevieve's new recipe yet? If you knew what's up, your answer should have always been yes. So hey, Genevieve, so great to have you. Speaker 1 (1:53) Hey, Francis, it's always so nice to talk to you. Speaker 6 (1:56) You know, I, you know this already, I tell you this every time I see you, but I always love your recipes. And I'm always so interested in seeing what you're choosing to write about. And I guess you're working on a recipe right now for smoking your own salmon? Speaker 1 (2:09) I am, I am. So as you know, I think I mentioned this to you the other day, but I actually have relocated to Los Angeles and I'm working on the New York Times LA Bureau. But one of the nice benefits of being out here is being able to actually grill again. Have a Speaker 4 (2:26) backyard. Speaker 1 (2:27) Have a backyard, actually grill. And I love smoking. Not cigarettes, obviously. I love. Yeah, so it's been super fun. And lately I've been working on smoking salmon. You know, it's really tricky to cold smoke salmon at home, though. So I'm trying to figure out how to hot smoke salmon and make it taste like cold smoked salmon. Speaker 6 (2:50) Oh, wow. Okay. You know, right? Like just for Speaker 1 (2:52) like food safety, right? Like I want to make sure, obviously it's all good to go, but yeah, that's sort of what I'm experimenting with right now. Speaker 6 (3:00) I remember, I actually, I remember when I learned the difference between hot smoked and cold smoked salmon, I was like 19 years old. But I think when most people hear smoked salmon, right, they think of that beautiful, like translucent. you know, thinly sliced, you put it on a bagel or you eat it with, you know, sometimes with dill and lemons, like, you know, that sort of like delicate thing. And hot smoked salmon is actually cooked, right? So that smoked salmon is cured and technically raw, but hot smoked salmon is actually cooked. And it is, I find like a good hot smoked salmon is delicious, but it's actually quite hard to come by, harder to come by, I think, than a good... Cold smoked salmon. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 (3:38) I've seen it at some seafood counters, but it is a bit harder to come by. And I think what I love about cold smoked salmon, like really, really, really cold smoked salmon that's been cured a long time too, is this really intense, almost like chewy texture. Right? Which is something you don't quite get with like the cold smoked salmon that's meant for like lox or, you know, gravlax, which isn't smoked at all. where it's really tender and silky slices. And then hot smoked salmon, you get this sort of lovely flakiness, but a little bit of chew. Like I love when there's Speaker 2 (4:12) a Speaker 1 (4:12) cold smoked salmon that's both somehow silky and chewy. So not as far as jerky, right? I don't want salmon jerky and I don't want like straight up salmon candy, which like, you know, you really have to chew like the kind you take on like camping trips. But something with a nice, yeah, with a nice. chew that's not tough so um you know there are certain there are certain words that i that i know from my native cantonese that i wish i could translate into english but there isn't and it's this concept of none which is like it's somehow chewy and tender it's often used to describe like perfectly cooked noodles right so it's not soft there's chew there's like resistance but it's still really silky and yeah that's really what i'm achieving yeah so i'm it's a combination of trying to achieve the right taste right the balance of salt smoke and sugar right that balance where it's it's not you don't want it super sweet but you definitely want that sweetness um and you definitely want the savoriness and you want the the almost sort of like the smokiness i'm looking for is like when you feel the wisps of the smoke but not like You're in a cloud of smoke. Does that make sense? When you're eating something, yeah, you either are tasting the like lovely gentle wisps of it and other times you feel like, oh no, I might be like choking on a huge cloud of smoke. Yeah, Speaker 6 (5:32) yeah, yeah. So flavorful and delicate. Okay, well coming soon to New York Times Cooking. Speaker 1 (5:38) Yeah. Right Speaker 6 (5:39) on. I'm excited for that. Okay, so we have a bunch of callers lined up who really want to talk to you. Should we go to them? Speaker 1 (5:46) Yeah, of course. So excited. Speaker 6 (5:48) Terrific. Well, thank you. Okay, let's start with Artie. Hi, Artie. Speaker 8 (5:53) Hi, Artie. Hi. Hi. Where Speaker 6 (5:56) are you calling from? Speaker 8 (5:58) I'm calling from Philadelphia. Speaker 6 (5:59) I love Philly. It's like the most underrated restaurant city in the entire country, I think. What do you want to talk about? Speaker 8 (6:07) My question is, is there a difference between buying previously frozen fish from the seafood counter and frozen fish in the freezer case at the grocery store besides the price? Speaker 6 (6:19) Oh, Speaker 1 (6:20) okay. I think about this a lot, yeah. Speaker 6 (6:23) I think about this all the time. I do. I don't sleep at night. Speaker 1 (6:28) Sometimes. Sometimes I lie awake in bed thinking about it. Speaker 6 (6:31) Well, actually, okay, Genevieve, I want to hear your opinions on this. And Arti, I think you have actually unveiled a little of the secret, I think, for a lot of people, which is a lot of the times the fresh fish in the store counter, you know, in the refrigerated case, has in fact been frozen. It's not like, oh, we took it off the boat this morning and somehow it got to your supermarket. Speaker 8 (6:53) So Speaker 6 (6:54) it has been frozen and oftentimes frozen at sea, frozen actually on the boat where it was caught. And so your question is, is there a difference between buying that and going to the freezer aisle and grabbing blocks of frozen fish that you'll defrost? Exactly. Speaker 6 (7:09) Genevieve, you think about this a lot. Speaker 1 (7:11) I do. I do. Because I do think, you know, those individually quick frozen fish plays that you can buy in the freezer section, like that is almost as fresh as you can get it, right? Because it's been frozen right after it's been caught. And it's still like rock hard and it's so fresh. And it is true that a lot of seafood counters, that's essentially what you're getting, except that they've thawed it. So for me, oftentimes the... The huge difference is really in time, right? Do you want to make dinner now? Or have you planned ahead enough that you have bought and are keeping a stash of those frozen fillets, but you've had the foresight to take it out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge? Because I really think that that's the most ideal way to thaw those fillets. I have in a pinch, for sure, slipped one of those completely sealed packets in cold water to quick thaw. But the texture does, yeah, the texture isn't quite as good as when you, you know, have the foresight either, you know, the night before, depending on how thick the fillet is, you know, putting in the fridge the night before or in the morning. So, yeah, the big difference is how much planning have you done to give yourself that time to thaw and to thaw it well and to thaw it properly, you know, so that it does so, you know, evenly. And in an ideal world, most fish counters are going to thaw it really nicely. Speaker 1 (8:29) But sometimes, you know, you want to take a look. You want to see. It should never look dry, right? The surface of the fish should never look dry, but also shouldn't look mushy or like too, like slimy at all. So I think the main difference is really in the thawing. Yeah. Speaker 6 (8:46) And that's such an unsexy thing to talk about. Speaker 1 (8:48) I know, I know. But it's so much more. I love the, I mean, I do both. I think I love. from fresh fish counters, depending on where you live. I mean, Philly, you're still pretty near the water and I'm sure you have some amazing markets. You know, if you can get fish there that's been caught like that morning, that's amazing, right? That is a whole different level of deliciousness. But if you're choosing between frozen and previously frozen, yeah. You know, I don't want to be a hypocrite and be like, oh, just plan ahead because I can never. I never find myself with enough foresight to do that. But yeah, those frozen fillets are really great. Great. That's super helpful. Speaker 6 (9:30) I think there's a little bit more that I think I would love to add to this a little bit, which is I have recently been kind of amazed, Arti, actually, in some of the quality of the frozen, like the still frozen fish that I can buy. Speaker 4 (9:45) Yeah. Speaker 6 (9:46) Yeah. There's really great technology on fishing boats these days to really freeze that fish very, very quickly and very, very well. And this is getting into real nerdiness. But when you freeze things, there's actually a difference in quality depending on how you freeze them. So if you take something and you chuck it in your freezer at home, it turns into a solid block of ice sooner or later. Speaker 2 (10:09) But Speaker 6 (10:10) if you freeze it at much lower temperature, i.e. freeze it much faster, the... the freshness is actually preserved. The quality of the food is actually often preserved. And there's a whole sort of scientific reason for it. And that is like, if you freeze something really quickly, then like the ice just kind of like the water content turns the ice immediately. And it doesn't have time to like form crystals slowly. Speaker 2 (10:34) And Speaker 6 (10:34) if you freeze it, you know, at like a home freezer temperature, the long time it takes for the ice to form crystals means that those crystals have time to like really get big. And they start to poke, and they poke at the cell walls, and they break the cell walls. And so when you defrost them, all those cell walls have already been broken, so a lot of the moisture in those cells starts to come out. And so that's why sometimes when you defrost something, there's a lot of water in the bag or something like that. And ships now have incredible freezing technology where they can just really freeze it super fast. There's something actually to the idea of like keeping it frozen all the way through until it gets to your home. And to your point, Genevieve, like you're defrosting it slowly in the refrigerator. So the thawing is sort of the opposite situation where you can like to thaw it slowly. Speaker 6 (11:24) then like it's truly almost as if the fish was caught, you know, moments ago. Speaker 4 (11:30) So yeah, Speaker 6 (11:30) I think Genevieve's point too, like if you're looking at the store and you're buying the quote unquote fresh fish, much of it already has been frozen, but you want to take a look at there. And also like the old saw of like, oh, go to a place where they actually do sell a lot of fish. So there's Speaker 1 (11:43) a Speaker 6 (11:43) lot of turnover in the inventory. You'll probably do pretty well either way. Speaker 1 (11:48) Yeah. And to your point, Francis, the other thing I do look for is, In terms of that really high quality freezing, ideally the supply chain, it's that frozen all the way through. But if you're looking at a bag of those frozen fillets and there's a lot of ice crystals or, you know, clearly it hasn't been super frozen all the way. Yeah. In that case, I wouldn't necessarily get that frozen stuff. Speaker 6 (12:12) Yeah. If you're seeing snow. You know, Speaker 1 (12:14) if you're seeing snow on the bags and stuff, you're like, oh no, this is at some point like not been as frozen as it should be. Speaker 6 (12:19) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I would keep a lookout for that. If you look inside those little frozen packets and you start to see like ice crystals inside on the exterior, maybe it's just like, oh, the humidity and the air froze to it or whatever. But if you start to see ice crystals inside that frozen bag, I would maybe move on from there. Speaker 8 (12:35) Okay. Thank you. That was really helpful. Speaker 6 (12:37) Right on. We'll enjoy your fish cooking and we'll talk to you later. Speaker 4 (12:41) Thanks. Take care, guys. Speaker 4 (12:44) We're taking your cooking questions with Genevieve Ko, Deputy Editor of New York Times Cooking. More with her and you in a minute. I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media. Speaker 4 (12:58) A show is supported by Square. We've all seen the Square Reader, you know, that slick device where you tap your credit card to pay the Speaker 6 (13:04) bill everywhere from your local coffee shop to a date night bistro. That's because Square is the platform behind so many restaurants you already love. It connects points of sale, online ordering, the kitchen, payments, reporting, and team management all in one place. That means restaurants can keep service moving, see how the business is performing, and get faster access to their money all in a snap. It works with no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, and no complicated setup. Just one system built to grow with your restaurant. 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