The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.56 Mostly About Cooking

Episode Date: September 11, 2015

I own a cookbook by Ian Knauer, called The Farm: Rustic Recipes for a Year of Incredible Food. I love it, so I invited Ian to come on the show to talk about his cooking, and the family farm that inspired the book.   

This is the Ruminant Podcast. I'm Jordan Marr. TheRuminant.ca is a website dedicated to sharing good ideas for farmers and gardeners. At The Ruminant, you can find past episodes of this podcast, essays I've written, a few book reviews, and a whole lot of photo-based blog posts, some of which were made by me and some of which were submitted by you. So I hope you'll check it out, TheRuminant.ca. And if you want to get a hold of me, editor at theruminant.ca or at ruminantblog on Twitter. Okay, let's do this show. Hey everybody, it's Jordan and I am talking to you on an absolutely gorgeous day, everybody. It's Jordan, and I am talking to you on an absolutely gorgeous day, a late summer day in BC's Okanagan Valley here on the farm. And I'm in a great mood. I just got off the phone

with a listener who called in to talk about some tips he had for using a Berta rotary plow on the back of his walking tractor after I invited you folks to get a hold of me about that. And it was a great conversation and his insights are going to improve the segment that i'm producing with scott humphries on on using the rotary plow and that's exactly what i'm hoping to do with the podcast i'm hoping i can convince some of you to get a hold of me uh either either to contribute to a segment that i've announced that i'm working on or just to to to tell me something that you think other farmers want to know about, something useful.

And that's what this listener did, David from Quebec, and it was a great conversation. And so I really hope that I can encourage more of that. And there are different ways you can get ahold of me. Editor at theruminant.ca is one. You can text me at my cell phone, 250-767-6636. Or you can call my Skype number where you can leave a self-contained

voicemail, either something you mean to be just added to the podcast or just to let me know you want me to get ahold of you. And that's 310-734-8426. So I really hope you'll consider doing that. I think all of us have some great insights we've made in our garden or on our farms that I think other people could really benefit from hearing about. Okay, so today's episode features my conversation with Ian Knauer, who is an American chef who wrote a cookbook that I picked up by chance about a year ago and I just fell in love with. It's a great book. It's called The Farm and like I say, it's a great book. So I wrote Ian some time ago just to tell him I thought his book was great. And I thought I'd ask him if he'd come on the podcast to talk about cooking and also about farming since he spent time on a farm.

And he graciously agreed to come on. Unfortunately, when we finally got together on the phone, he was driving and talking on his cell phone. So the audio quality is not great, but it's not terrible either. So I apologize for that. But that's all I really need to say. It was just a fun conversation, mostly about cooking. And so I hope you enjoy it. Here it is. And I'll talk to you at the end. Ian Knauer, thanks a lot for joining me on the ruminant podcast. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Ian, I asked you to come on the show because about a year ago i purchased your book your cookbook called the farm rustic recipes for a year of incredible food

and i'll start by telling you a little anecdote i i had read somewhere that it was a good book and then like i do when i read that kind of stuff about cookbooks, I looked it up online and just saw right away that it was really cheap as an e-book on Amazon so I picked it up just because of that, because what the hell, you know but I loved it so much and I hate reading e-books for cooking so much that

I ordered the hardcover I just think it's a great book, you've done a really good job Thank God I told Amazon to charge more for it. I think you should. At the time, I think I paid $3. It's worth a heck of a lot more. Ian, I guess I want to start with your dedication in the book. You've dedicated this cookbook to Daniel Knauer, and I'm wondering who that is and why you dedicated it to him. Daniel was my grandfather on my father's side, of course, and he was sort of the patriarch of the

family. My father's one of seven children, and I'm one of 24 grandchildren on that side, and he was very, very involved with the family farm he was going to kept it in the family and did a lot of the a lot of updates and maintenance on it and as the oldest grandchild I often got looked into all that work as well so I in hindsight was very fortunate to be able to spend so much time with him when I was growing up. And he really taught me a lot about pretty much everything. Right. And I take it, it becomes pretty clear when you start reading this cookbook that the farm is the main inspiration for the cookbook. And so I'm wondering if I have that right. And regardless, if you could describe your family's farm.

Yeah, you're right. It's a really neat place. It's a special place. It's about 40 acres, which is a typical size for a farm from that era, which is the mid-1700s. And it's not a working farm anymore. We don't sell what we produce.

We just eat it. But of course, there's a lot of maintenance that goes along with it. And it's been in the family so long that it makes it sort of a special place. We gather there for reunions. We often gather there. And in fact, the town that it's in is called Knauerown, named after the family. The original member of the family came over from southern Germany in the mid-1600s and got a deed from William Penn & Sons for about 3,000 acres in Pennsylvania, and the 40-acre farm is all that's left of that. Great. Thank you, Ian. And can you also talk a little bit about, so, so, I mean, the farm very

clearly inspired the book in terms of, I mean, most of the kind of the theme of the book is, is recipes that were inspired by the farm in general, and specifically this massive garden, you and your, um, some of your sisters and cousins put in. Um, but what about your, what about your, your cooking background? Like where, where did about your cooking background? Can you talk a little bit about how you became a professional chef? Sure. It wasn't a very typical road. I did not go to culinary school. Instead, I studied business and became a stockbroker when I graduated college. And I did that for about two years and hated every second of it. And so what I would do to sort of clear my head is go back to the farm and book.

And it was really what I enjoyed doing. And I decided at one point that, you know, I should try and figure out how to make a living doing what i love doing set up trying to make a living doing something that he did i uh... i quit the stock market and i've got very lucky i met the woman who was it just got about the editor-in-chief of gordon magazine things professional and she was looking to hire someone uh... who had not been a college or someone who is very added uh... and and passionate home cook uh... but she did not want a professional culinary school, someone who was a very avid and passionate home cook, but she did not want a professional cook.

She wanted someone who was like the readers of the magazine to test the recipe. So I got that job. This was in 2001, and did that for about three years. And eventually what happens when you cook every day for a living is you become a professional cook. So I learned all the tricks that they hoped I didn't know when I first got the job, and so I outgrew the job. Instead of firing me, which they could have done, they promoted me, which was very nice. And my new title at the magazine was food editor. So that meant that instead of testing the recipes, I got to write the recipes and develop the recipes.

And so I was there until 2009, which is when the magazine closed. And that was really my education in food. You know, I got to cook every recipe that was published in the magazine for almost a decade. And when you do that, you really learn the ins and the outs of cooking. And so it just really was a wonderful education for me. So, and that's, it is, I mean, I agree with you. It is a really interesting background in terms of how you got into it. and also, I would think, really, really valuable in going on to make a cookbook, because you spent a lot of time testing other people's recipes, hey?

That's exactly right. Yeah, so not only testing, but then writing them. So I really, really got some insight on what makes a recipe work and what doesn't make a recipe work, you know, what does and doesn't work. And I was able to use those skills that I learned in the magazine in the book. So when you decided to make your cookbook, what did you primarily want to do differently? Well, I wanted to really tell a story. You know, cookbooks can be a fantasy in a way. I have hundreds of them at home, and I'd love to read through them and look at the pictures and read the headnotes and really

understand the story of where the food comes from. And so in my book, I really focused on that. A lot of the recipes are for my grandmother's recipes. A lot of them have Pennsylvania Dutch roots like my family. But at the same time, I tried to modernize them and make them something that home cooks would want to cook these days too. So really the story behind the recipes is something that I wanted to bring out out front. And I think you did a great job. One thing I like about the book is just about, just about or maybe every single recipe has a short story behind it that you start with.

And that's really cool. So who is, did you have an intended audience in mind when you wrote it, Ian? Not really. I mean, you know, when you write a cookbook proposal that wants you to figure out who's going to buy the book and the publisher wants to know. So I tried my best to do that. But, you know, one of the things that has become so popular now is the idea of farm to table. You know, and that's a phrase that we hear so much these days. But it isn't always explained, you know. So it's buying locally.

It's buying what you grow. It's, you know, finding these heirloom recipes that really help this produce and the meat that you have shine. Right. And, I mean, that's one thing I really appreciate about the book is that there's just, there's all, you know, I run – I'm a farmer.

I grow vegetables for a living and I run a CSA. And so one of the challenges of putting out a CSA is a lot of your customers don't know what to do with what you're sending them. And this is a great book for giving me inspiration but also also my customers and and uh i've i've encouraged them to take a look just because there's so many options for a lot of the lesser less popular stuff or less less known stuff coming out of the garden sure i think i've i think i have three recipes for swiss chard in there because that's one of the things that is really easy uh for me to grow. So, you know, I've got, I got a lot of it. Yeah. Um, I also like that you, you know, well first, okay, I better go back. You mentioned the farm to table movement and there's a couple of things I wanted to ask you about that movement. First of all,

where you think it's at. I mean, you've, you've been a professional chef kind of all the way through the last 15 years or so of this movement and I'm just wondering what you've observed about where it started and where it's at now. I think it's gone a long way since I've been cooking. You know, just the importance of understanding where your food comes from has become a national consciousness, which it wasn't 15 years ago. And in fact, I think a lot of that wouldn't be possible without the CSA model. You know, people now have an opportunity to really support their local farm, and they can do it by investing in a share.

And I think that that has really changed the way that we eat in this country. If not for everyone, of course, then for people who are interested in that. And I think it's a really great step and a great direction that we're going in. I think we're not entirely there yet, of course, but I think things are a lot better than they were. In terms of where I think we're at with the farm-to-table movement, Ian, I agree with you that we've made great progress. movement. And I think we, I agree with you that we've made great progress, um, in that people, so many more people are just are like really into the idea of sourcing local and, and obtaining fresh ingredients. Uh, but I still think we have progress to make, like, and for example, there's so many great, uh, greens and other vegetables that, that still aren't really appreciated. And I would say chief among them are the bitter plants, so your endives and your dandelion and that sort of thing. I think it's such a shame

because they're so good, but I can totally understand why people don't want to cook with them. You know what I mean? It takes a while to develop a palate for them. Yeah, I think you're true. I think you're right. That's totally true. But one of the things that I always go back to is that if you know how to cook something and you have the right recipe for that ingredient, then it's going to be delicious. So bitter greens are actually one of my favorite things. And I think if you treat them the right way, then they'll definitely be well

liked. So dandelion is a good example. There's a recipe in the book that was my grandmother's for dandelion, and it's an old Pennsylvania Dish recipe. And it adds bacon fat and a little bit of sugar and some vinegar to the dressing, and those really round out that bitter flavor. So you have the saltiness, smokiness, sweetness, and the acid. And it really sort of like makes it much more palatable, actually. I have another recipe for escarole that has a cream sauce and a sauce of pasta. So, you know, I think once people are able to taste those bitter greens, for example, and they have the right recipe, then I think they'll absolutely be on board with it. I know I am.

Ian, I want to just go back to the process of making a cookbook, and I'm wondering as you headed into the process, did you have any of your own pet peeves about other cookbooks that you were trying to avoid? Well, yeah, and this is going to sound funny, but a lot of recipes will not use the word the. So they will say instead, they'll say boil water in a pot, add discharge, salt, and et cetera, et cetera.

Instead of saying bring a pot of water to a boil, but then add the discharge. And I think that that addition, that one word, the word the, makes a huge difference in the instead of saying bring a pot of water to a boil, but then add the Swiss chard. And I think that that addition, that one word, the word the, makes a huge difference in the way it reads, the way the recipe reads. It stops reading like serial instructions and starts feeling like someone's actually telling you how to put together the dish. So that, you know, something as small as that to something that's a much larger picture, with, for instance, the chapter introduction.

So each chapter in my book has a little story in the beginning of it that sets the tone for the recipes and explains why they're in there. So I think all those, and everything in between, really. Another thing is measurements of salt. So a lot of recipes will say in the ingredient list, they'll say half a teaspoon of salt or something like that. And I think that salt's really subjective.

So I try to not call for measures of salt, instead just call for salt and then say, add this much here and then add this much here, and then add some more to taste when you taste it at the end. So I think, yeah, all those points and probably many more went into the process see what's kind of interesting about your last comment about salt is that i think it's the kind of thing that those precise measurements that new cooks really desire because they're so new cooks tend to just lack confidence and be kind of almost stressed out in the kitchen and really appreciate

those uh exact amounts but as you point out the trade-off is that that it it is a subjective thing seasoning and that and that when you when you follow exact amounts you you don't end up with the right flavors and i guess it just depends on the cooking conditions and everything else yeah that's true and you know it depends on the salt different salts are different levels of saltiness. In fact, like a table salt, like a fine salt, is twice as salty as a kosher salt. There's actually twice as much salt in there. So it's hard to give exact measurements, and I think tasting the food as you cook it and, you know, again, before you serve it is probably the most important key when it comes to seasoning.

And unfortunately, it just seems people you just have to learn that as a cook i mean it's not really it's not very there's not very many places where that's really explained um you know like and that was one of the major breakthroughs i made as a home cook is just learning to taste constantly and just just take a looser approach you know rather than just following recipes super strictly. Yeah, that's exactly right. And like anything else, you're not going to get good at cooking unless you cook. And then you'll get better and you'll get better and better and better. And, you know, no one, even the best cooks among us, was born knowing how to cook.

I think some people have a, you know, a passion for it that makes it easier to learn. But unless you're doing it, unless you're willing to make some mistakes and realize that it's just dinner on the table at the end of the world, then you're not going to learn those little fine points that you pick up when you cook. And so, you know, now that, speaking of cooking,

I kind of want to just round out our conversation, Ian, with just some specific questions for you, the professional cook. I don't get a chance to do that very often. And I thought I'd try and make them more in the context of farmers who are either cooking for themselves or cooking for a farm crew. But first, I just want to ask like one that I've unrelated that I wanted to ask a professional for a while. I've really come to appreciate in the last couple of years how versatile and wonderful the lemon is in the kitchen.

But I feel like I'm constantly using lemons for juice. And I know there's other aspects of the lemon that are really valuable, but I'm often just composting the rest of the lemon. And I'm wondering how I or you, how I can get more out of a lemon. Is there something I should be doing with the rind all the time and saving it? Sure. I mean, there are lots of options, actually. First of all, the zest, just the yellow part on the outside, has a ton of very floral flavor.

ton of very floral flavor. So any chance I get, I get that off there with a rasp or a microplane and add it to the dish or put it in a salad dressing or whatever. But then the pith, the white part that's quite bitter, that can be good too. Some people actually like it the way it is. In fact, somebody just told me last night that he puts half of a lemon, the whole thing, in a blender with olive oil and salt and pepper and makes a creamy salad dressing with that. And it is a little bitter, but he seems to like that. So I haven't tried that yet, but I'm definitely going to. And then you can also preserve that pit.

You can either make preserved lemon, which is done by just adding salt to it. So put your lemon, you can just use the pit if you is done by just adding salt to it. So put your lemon, you can just use the bit that you want, in a jar and pack it with salt. And that will sort of like suck all the liquid out of there, and it will make it much more mild to eat and taking away a lot of that bitterness. And then finally you can candy it. So you can cut up that rind and cook it very low and slow with some sugar. And it will cook all that bitterness out of there and give you a really, really nice, complexly flavored rind of a lemon. So yeah, I love them.

I use them in almost everything. So is that to suggest that you're rarely composting much of the lemon? Like are you almost all the time using that whole lemon? That's kind of what I'm getting at. Should I be feeling, am I doing the wrong thing? Because I'm almost always composting the lemon, and often all I'm using is the juice, and that just seems like a waste. Yeah, I mean, it's entirely up to you.

At some point, depending on how many lemons you use, you're going to have an absolute excess of lemon rinds. juice, you're going to have an absolute excess of lemon rind. Yeah. So, you know, if you want to candy them or preserve them, I think that's a great option. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with throwing it in a compost bottle. You should not lose any sleep over that. Okay, but what about the zest? Sorry, I'm quickly revealing I'm kind of obsessed with this right now. But should I be taking the zest off and storing it in the fridge like with every lemon

and just trying to incorporate it into different recipes? Yeah, I would. I mean, I think of the zest as free flavor, and it doesn't take any work to get, whereas something like preserving a lemon or candying a lemon, you're going to spend a couple hours or even a week or so when it comes to preserving to get it where you want to get it. a couple hours or even a week or so when it comes to preserving to get it where you want to get it. But the zest, I just take that off and wrap it in a little ball of plastic wrap, stick it in the fridge if you're not going to use it right away, and then put it in just about anything. I mean,

put it in pancake batter and it's going to make them better. Is it a decent substitute for the juice? You know what I mean? Like I use a lemon for the juice, I save the zest, and then the next time I need juice, I just use the zest? Or do you consider them quite different? Well, I think they are quite different. The zest doesn't have any acid component to it, but it does have a lot of lemony, floral flavor. So a great way to get that flavor into something like a cake or a cupcake, for instance, without adding the acid to the juice, is to use the zest. Right. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Ian. So another thing I wanted to ask you

is just cooking for a group in a hurry, like in a supreme hurry, but in the same context you have at your farm where you have an absolute bounty of stuff. So you have almost unlimited veggie choices, but you don't have a lot of time. And I wondering i'll try i'll try and focus the question a bit like one thing that that if you have a big garden you always have a lot of a zucchini and i'm just i thought i'd ask you like if you have a lot of zucchini and also an unlimited

supply of other veg um but you want to make zucchini the star of a dish and you have 20 minutes to feed a group of five, what would you do? Yeah, I would not cook it. I would actually serve it raw. So zucchini is a good example. You could shave that really thinly. If you have a little hand slicer, that would be the best way to do it. You can also do it with a knife.

But get it paper thin and then toss it like you would a salad, maybe some Parmesan cheese, put your lemon and your lemon zest in there, some olive oil, salt and pepper, and you have like an instant dish that takes as long as it takes to slice the vegetables, you know, no cooking required. I would say the same with just about everything, Swiss chard included, obviously tomatoes. So if you can come up with a really quick salad-like dish, you're going to spend a lot less time actually cooking because you're not cooking. Okay, so that actually is a great segue into my last question about cooking and probably my last question of this interview, Ian. I wanted to ask you about not salad dressing recipes, but just general approaches or concepts with salad dressing. Because you just said you can take almost so much of the garden's produce make it you know prepare it raw and

then just put a nice dressing on um but we've all i don't know i've i've had many fails with dressing just ones that just don't you know when you have when you taste a good dressing it's just incredible it doesn't always happen to me as a home cook and i'm wondering like just if you could talk about some general principles in in just creating a quick really delicious dressing for raw veg sure yeah i mean the the most general thing to mention is the proportion of oil to acid and i think a lot of people skimp on the on the oil part but what you really want is three parts oil to one part acid. And that's going to feel like a lot, but then you're going to taste it, and it's going to taste delicious because that oil will coat your mouth

and really balance out the acid and salt in the dressing. So I would start there, three parts oil. Olive oil, obviously, is a great choice for salad, and it's what I use most of the time. So one part acid, and that could be your lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, you know, any number of other acids in there. Another great trick is to add an emulsifier. So those are things that make the oil and the acid come together instead of separating. You know, you can shake lemon juice and olive oil as much as you want,

and eventually it's going to separate into two layers. You can see that. You see it all the time. But if you add an egg yolk or some Dijon mustard or an anchovy filet that's chopped up or a garlic clove that's smashed, all those things will act to bring it together so that it doesn't separate. And what you end up getting is an even better mouthfeel um so any one of those or any combination of those uh will give you a really really nice dressing oh right on that emulsifier tip is really great i mean i i didn't

i hadn't really thought about that a lot um uh just as a as a as a follow-up i find i find as a home cook that i often overdress just in terms of volume. Do you know that classic kind of soggy salad? Sure. And is it just a matter of making a really strong dressing and then going lighter because a little goes a long way? Or is there something else I'm missing? Yeah, I think you got it exactly. Make a really flavorful dressing and use half of it and then

taste it and see what it looks like and how it feels and then you can always add more, of course. Another thing to do is add half the dressing and then sprinkle it with a little extra salt which will help bring all those flavors out. Either one of those is a great way to start and then, again,

you can always add more. I have to say i really like soggy salad so if i'm ever at your farm you can feel free to throw all the dressing on for me all right well you have an open invitation ian um ian it's a great book we barely got we barely scratched the surface ourselves there's a whole uh chapter on preserving that's probably one of my most used chapters you're the ketchup recipe you have in there is oh it's killer man it's so good um but i'm glad you like it good well uh i hope people check it out the farm rustic recipes for a year of incredible food and uh thanks a lot for coming on the show thanks for having me this is really fun okay so let me try putting it this way what is the best decision that you made on your farm or in your garden this year? I would love to hear about that decision, and I think other listeners would too.

So why don't you get a hold of me and let me know. I'll call you back and we can record a quick little segment. You can text me, 250-767-6636. You can email me, editor at theruminant.ca or you can call my Skype number 310-734-8426. Another thing that you could call me about is to let me know what you do in the winter. Scott, one of my collaborators, had the idea to do an episode about that. What do farmers do? A lot of people need to make money to get by just to make ends meet or they just need to fill their time.

So how have you made it work for your farming career? I'd love to know that. And I hope you liked that conversation with Ian and maybe you'll consider checking out his book. It's a good one. Take care, everybody. in a place that don't want us, a place that is trying to bleed us dry. We could be happy with life in the country with salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands. I've been doing a lot of thinking Some real soul searching

And here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house Or some fancy car To keep my love going strong So we'll run right out Into the wilds and graces We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces. And live next door to the birds and the bees.

And live life like it was meant to be. Bye.