Welcome! We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've published three dozen cookbooks at seven New York publishing houses, so we love to talk about food and cooking.

In this episode, we're delighted to welcome Philip Khoury to our kitchen. He's the head pastry chef at Harrod's and he's got a brand-new book out, A NEW WAY TO BAKE. You can find it here.

His book is about vegan desserts and baking. It's incredibly beautiful and we're so lucky he came on the show to talk to Bruce about his revelation about vegan baking.

We've also got a one-minute cooking tip. And we'll let you know what's making us happy in food this week. Let's get started!

[00:59] Our one-minute cooking tip: Use clean vintage ashtrays as spoon rests in your kitchen.

[04:31] Bruce's interview with Philip Khoury, the head chef at Harrod's in London and the author of the brand-new cookbook A NEW WAY TO BAKE.

[20:46] What’s making us happy food this week: Chinese noodles and a braised chuck roast.

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough, and together with Bruce, we have written three dozen cookbooks, written and published with New York publishers.

Three dozen cookbooks, and in fact, we now know we have sold a million copies.

More than a million.

More than a million, and the number keeps rising as our agent's assistant keeps assembling the number.

It's kind of insane, uh, that we have sold as many cookbooks.

books as we have over the course of our career.

But we're here on this podcast because Bruce and Mark, not talking about any of our cookbooks, but instead we're going to give you, as is traditional, our one minute cooking tip, which grosses me out.

God, I didn't come up with this.

Bruce has an interview with.

about his new vegan baking book, and we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

So let's get started.

This week's cooking tip.

This is about style and deco.

No, no, don't even, don't even, you know, lead up to it.

Just say it.

Use, use vintage, clean.

Ashtrays as spoon rests when you're cooking.

They're fun!

They're all different colors and shapes and if they're clean, you can use it to rest your big mixing spoons, your wooden spoons on your stove rather than Why is it so distasteful?

No, it's fun.

You just go look for vintage green glass and blue glass and swans and all sorts of vintage ashtrays.

Okay, so I grew up in the' sixties and there's a little little kid in the sixties and then in the seventies and my family were really right wing Christian Protestant American Christian Protestants, and we did not smoke.

No one.

I knew smoked except at a couple uncles and cousins who smoke, but otherwise people around us occasionally.

And the Even we had ashtrays on the tables in our house.

Everyone had ashtrays.

I mean, everyone in my family smoked.

Well, my father's parents didn't smoke.

And you were not allowed to smoke at their house unless you went out on the terrace.

They were lucky enough in Manhattan to have a three bedroom apartment with a terrace.

I remember people smoking in our non smoking house.

Yeah, well, my parents both smoked, and all their friends smoked, and bridge parties were disgusting, but there were lots of ashtrays.

You want me to use an ashtray?

I want you to, you could find vintage ones that have never been used.

And they're fun, and they're pretty, yes.

Yeah, you can find vintage septic tanks that have never been used, and, or cleaned out, and use it to rest your lawnmower in, come on.

That's so distasteful.

If you have found a good vintage ashtray that you think is cool, share a picture with us on our Facebook group, Cooking With Bruce DeMarcus.

I want to see what you're using for your spoon rest.

You this one minute cooking tip too long, but it's already been extended too long, but I have to tell you this story.

Once we decided, uh, when we first moved up to rural New England, that we were going to buy, Spoon rests.

You know, like at Bed Bath and Beyond, you know those giant big spoon rests that are metal and they kind of look like a spoon with the handle folded back.

And we were gonna use those as soap dishes.

'cause we're cookbook writers, aren't we clever?

And we're cookbook writers and so we're gonna have these around the house and they're gonna be soap dishes in the bathrooms.

Right.

Okay.

We do.

And we then we have this couple who were, and note the tenses of the verb, were friends of ours up from Manhattan for the weekend.

And when they left, all the soap dishes were gone from the house.

They shoplifted my house.

We went to clean the bathrooms and I was like, mark, where are the soap dishes?

He is like, unbelievable.

I don't know.

It's like our own little what?

Little drama.

Peaky blinders or something happening right in my house.

All these pickpockets and shop livers.

I mean, come on.

Really seriously, they took the spoon rests.

Okay, those spoon rests.

I get ash trays.

I, okay, I have to admit you really got a reaction out of me because it's really kind of funny.

Bruce Mostly writes the one minute cooking tips and I don't necessarily know what they are unless I come up with something before we come into the podcast studio to record and I saw this and I was just like what in the world is he talking about?

But okay All right.

It's kind of amusing to me.

I can just see some fancy people that we know with ashtrays.

I've got a picture of those ashtrays that had like a picture of like the Eiffel Tower in the model.

Oh my gosh.

All right.

Baccarat ashtrays.

Oh, well, all right.

Now we're talking Baccarat ashtrays.

Right.

I didn't grow up in that house.

All right.

Next on the podcast, Bruce's interview Philip Corey, he is the author of the brand new book, A New Way to Bake.

I'm speaking with Philip Khoury, currently the head pastry chef at Harrods in London, where he's introduced plant based and allergen friendly patisserie.

And he has an amazing new book called A New Way to Bake, reimagined recipes for plant based cakes.

Bakes and desserts.

Hey phil.

How are you?

I'm very good.

Bruce.

Thanks for having me

You studied classic pastry in your native australia and then moved to london where you ended up in harrods Legendary food halls where you lead a team of pastry professionals and I have to ask Why in a successful world of yours where pastry creams and butter layers are king Did you decide to play around with plant based baking

for me?

It was just about having more options.

I think we Have You know, evolved the traditional pastries that we have, but, you know, most trained pastry chefs are completely lost when it comes to having options that either cut out dairy or eggs or butter or any of the things that we're kind of used to, including, you know, gluten and, um, So for me, it was about just having more options.

I was definitely at a point where I felt a bit overwhelmed, um, in terms of My contribution as a pastry chef.

I felt like through through like Something that is just superfluous in society.

That isn't crucial especially faced with the climate crisis That that is undoubtedly happening.

And for me, this was just my small way of contribute contributing the way that I know How by producing a book of more options for plant based cakes Bakes and desserts.

And I think the key here is that this isn't the only way it's not the best way.

It's just more ways to bake that fully utilize a lot of the plant based pantry that we already have.

Um, yeah.

Are any of these plant based bakes in your book for sale at Harrods?

Yes, we had a number of them available at different times.

Right now, we have a lovely banoffee pie, which is, you know, we've got a digestive biscuit base mixed with some chocolate, some fresh bananas, a caramel crema with fresh whipped vanilla cream, chocolate shavings, and like a thin layer of chocolate ganache.

Yeah, all vegan.

And the whole thing is that we learned pretty early on that we, when we were marketing products specifically as vegan, that they just didn't sell.

And I think that's because a lot of people, when they're looking at this beautiful counter of desserts, there are so many preconceived notions and biases against vegan food being, you know, bland or dense or whatever.

Um, or just generally not very good.

And what we found was when we Removed vegan from the title.

Uh, this was in our, the first launch is almost five years ago.

We removed vegan from the title and put it in the description.

In brackets.

And so if you were looking for it, you'd see it.

But if you weren't, you'd almost miss it.

And that was a big turning point for us because, and obviously the desserts had to stand up on their own two feet.

But, um, essentially we have desserts that that shot to the top, you know, the top of the range, um, that remain in the counter to this day.

Because they are excellent on their own, you know, with regardless of the fact that they're, they're vegan.

I like to say that the desserts are accidentally vegan, but they're definitely, it definitely wasn't an accident.

It takes a lot of work to create that.

Yeah.

I personally don't eat dairy.

And when people invite me over for dinner, it's always dessert that throws them for a loop.

I mean, so many people can't imagine baking without butter, but Plant oils play a crucial role in the recipes in your books.

And what is it about oils that make them such a wonderful and expansive baking alternative?

Uh, I mean, for me, that was one of the early discoveries, um, that really changed my perception.

Most oils are naturally plant based, and my favorite oil to bake with is extra virgin olive oil.

And you'll find that we actually have to use a lot less oil than we do use fats in traditional recipes.

And flavor wise, they do not have as strong a flavor as you think they would have in a finished product.

I definitely have a preference for cold pressed or virgin oils, because I think they're the healthiest ones to use.

And I strongly encourage people to steer clear of...

Ultra processed, uh, solvent extracted, uh, kind of ultra refined oils, because you don't need to.

And the whole point for me was that, you know, margarines typically use lower quality, solvent extracted seed oils.

That have been solidified using palm oil or partial hydrogenation.

And essentially the margarine is not a great ingredient.

There may be some brands that are fantastic, but they're far and few in between you never a guaranteed supply recipes may change.

So for me, it was about stripping back recipes to the most.

foundational functional ingredients.

And so in nearly all my recipes, I use extra virgin olive oil because it's globally available.

And if you don't have it, you can use nearly any other oil.

I highly recommend, uh, peanut oil as well.

Uh, you can get peanut oils and, uh, sunflower oils that are cold press that have very light flavor.

And, uh, which complement a lot of, a lot of baked goods, too.

And besides oils, so many of your recipes call for plant based milk, any variety.

So, what's your take on that?

Are they really interchangeable?

Well, for me, you could use water.

I mean, for a lot of the time, when we look at an egg, it's mostly water.

It has some incredible gelling functionality, um, from all the protein.

But, apart from that, you couldn't replace an egg with something like aquafaba.

But you, by tweaking the recipe, it allows you to allow the functionality of other ingredients to come out more.

So, I think I'll probably get into that a bit later, but to answer your question, yes, they are almost interchangeable because I've tweaked all the recipes and balanced them to allow other functionalities to come to play.

Uh, in other, in, in new and exciting ways.

And yes, they are interchangeable because you could almost use water, but I think most people prefer the milkier, mellowed out flavors that you get from using a plant, a plant milk, inverted, inverted, uh, brackets, inverted commas.

Well, it's fascinating that you could do that.

So.

Let's talk about eggs.

So many vegan bakes call for psyllium, chia seeds, flax seeds.

You don't use any of those thickeners in your bake.

So how do you achieve the loft and the crumb that you would otherwise get from eggs?

So by letting Flour do more work, essentially.

So Going back to this philosophy that I have that we have so many ingredients with incredible functionality We've we've always leaned on ingredients like butter and eggs as crutches And they they evolved in the recipes that we have for very good reason I think if you look at how we got to cake as a product We started with breads that were gradually enriched with eggs with honey with sugar with milk with butter Until we ended up with a ratio that inverted and you ended up with more sugar and more butter and eggs, and that's how we got cake.

And so they do exist for genuinely good reasons, but I think when you want to look at an alternative, if I was to take a pound cake, for example, a pound cake is typically a pound of butter, eggs, sugar, flour, and what you'll find is that you have to use a pound of butter to tenderize a pound of eggs and a pound of flour, which do a similar thing, which when you cook, they gel.

And so when you take out the eggs and replace them with water, you actually need to reduce the fat by anywhere up to 60 percent to allow the flour to do more of what it does.

So it's kind of this careful balancing of ratios, which only comes from experience and understanding how these ingredients work to reach the kind of fine balance that you need to allow each of these ingredients to do their job.

Well, your experience with this and your expertise is allowing home cooks now to create plant based bakes at home with ingredients they probably already have, which is really nice.

They don't necessarily have to go out and buy a whole bunch of new stuff just to be able to make your recipes.

Yeah, that was for me the most crucial part, uh, of this book.

Everything had to be something that you could buy in a supermarket or which most likely already had.

Because, you know, as a pastry chef, I have access to some fantastic ingredients that do a great job, but they're maybe not necessarily available globally, and there, or there are variations between, um, these kind of manufactured ingredients across countries and across territories.

So, I mean, it was very important that this was basic, naturally plant based ingredients that we already have.

Hey, your chapter on biscuits and cookies has some amazing all time favorites, nut shortbreads, sugar cookies, these gorgeous almond amaretti, which you stuff with amarena cherries, and mostly in your cookies and biscuits, you call for extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil, but you have a recipe for chocolate tahini cookies.

How does tahini work?

As a fat without drying out a cookie.

So that's a really interesting recipe.

And I found that you could actually use most nut butters in replaced to replace the tahini content.

And this is just another example of using the fat from melted chocolate, using the fat from a nut butter to create a new formula for a kind of a fudgy, very slightly cakey, but more fudgy cookie that has a really nice.

Nutty flavor from tahini or from peanuts or hazelnuts, like whatever, whatever cookie nut butter you, uh, you like, but I just love the flavor of tahini because it's a, it's a flavor and ingredient that's close to my heart being from the Middle East.

Let's talk about chocolate for a minute.

Uh, your tarts and pies are mostly classics apple pie pecan pie and chocolate ganache tart You even have ganache truffles at the end of the book.

Okay.

How is ganache possible without cream?

I knew you were gonna ask me this I love chocolate as an ingredient As a flavor, and I love using it, I love eating it, I love crafting with it, and it's just got a really beautiful functionality in that it's high in cocoa butter, and cocoa butter sets nice and hard, you've got a nice mix of cocoa solids and sugar, that when you create a simple emulsion with any plant based milk or water, you end up with a really beautiful, luscious, creamy texture, and that's just from using the functionalities that exist in the chocolate itself.

Now, one other question, after years of us all watching the Great British Baking Show.

We all seem to be judged by how well we do a Victoria sponge.

The photo of your finished Victoria sponge cake has fresh berries and dollops of vanilla cream.

It's gorgeous.

Okay, a sponge without butter and eggs?

Is that just the flour again?

It's just the flour.

Yeah.

So I mean with one extra ingredient, it's a tweaked Spun recipe that I love to use and I've included a small amount of cooked sweet potato and This just gives it this beautiful golden buttery hue and Along with just carefully balancing the sponge recipe, we end up with a texture that is very, uh, close to a classic Victoria sponge.

And you know, when we, when I redeveloped the Victoria sponge recipe at Harrods, the first thing I did was take out A small portion of the butter and replace it with some oil.

And as most professional chefs will tell you, sponges made with some oil have a far superior texture.

There are a lot more moist, they eat better, they keep better.

And for me, it was borrowing that methodology of using a little bit of oil.

Because it softens the butter fat.

And you have to think when, when, uh, when you bake a beautiful, fresh Victoria sponge and you take it out of the oven and it cools down, if you're in a cool room, nice seasonal crisp autumn or winter weather, that butter is going to set quite hard and it has a drying effect on the palate.

So that inclusion or replacement of a bit of the butter with some oil.

Completely changes the mouth feel of a sponge.

It makes it so much smoother, more tender.

And I love the word moist.

Um, it just, it, it has that effect.

And so that effect translates.

It's fully in the Victoria Sponge recipe in my book.

Your book has more than 80 recipes of amazing plant based bakes.

As you say, you wouldn't even know they were vegan unless you were told they were vegan.

They're beautiful.

I can't wait to bake my way through this book.

Philip Khoury, head pastry chef at Harrods and author of A New Way to Bake.

You're a delight to talk to, and thanks so much for spending some time with me this morning.

Thank you so much for having me, Bruce.

I think baking vegan is hard.

I think it's hard for a lot of people.

It is.

It's hard.

And I'm thrilled with all these people who are attempting to make it more mainstream.

It's funny because I always found that baking without dairy is easy, but a lot of people can't even imagine baking without butter.

But you were raised in a...

In kosher adjacent home, I mean, your mother and father weren't kosher, but your relatives were kosher.

Yeah, so

I was used to my grandparents.

So you were kosher adjacent.

Yeah, my grandmother baked without butter all the time.

And without cream, so I can imagine that.

But when you get into no eggs, and when you're making all these fancy pastries that have pastry creams and whipped creams and you're using, you know, aquafaba and you're using coconut cream is fascinating and quite delicious and quite something that interests me.

I think I'm going to be doing more of it.

Yeah, I, well I wish you would because I actually, I think it is a new way to bake.

I think he's right about that.

And I think that it offers new takes on old standards and you know, I mean it's nice to have the old standards, but it's also nice to have new takes on the old standards.

So I'm really, interested in all these people that are coming out with vegan baking books, because I think it is a really interesting way to twist around what has been done.

And I'm not doing that for health reasons, for dietary reasons, or because I think it's more ecologically sound, because often it's not.

It's not any of those reasons.

I just think sometimes it's really interesting to, for lack of a better word, try to reinvent the wheel, to try, in fact, to do something new.

All right, before we get to the last part of this podcast, the traditional segment of what's making us happy and food this week, let me say that it would be great if you could rate this podcast or subscribe to it.

You can do that on any platform you're listening to us on you can give us a rating.

Many of them will allow you to actually write a comment or give a review.

You can do that in the chat.

any language whatsoever.

Thank you for doing that on any national platform.

We see the sheer number of listeners we have in Australia and Canada.

We very,

but they speak English.

Yes, they do.

I'm not saying that.

I know that.

Thank you.

But we would very much appreciate reviews on Australian sites, on Canadian sites, on UK sites, but as well on French sites, German sites, and other places where we see listeners to this podcast.

Thank you for doing that in advance.

Now up next.

the traditional end of the podcast, what's making us happy in food this week.

Alkaline Chinese noodles.

They're bouncy.

You talk about obscure.

They're hard to find.

So we had a Chinese dinner party a few weeks ago and my friend Faye Brought me some alkaline noodles as a house gift, which is a really,

Bruce is so chefy and Bruce is so into particularly regional Chinese cooking that it's really a thoughtful house gift to bring him and

they made the best Dan Dan noodles I'd ever had because Dan Dan noodles, if you know, but that's a very, very spicy, a little bit of meat, lots of chilies, almost like a chili crisp with pork that goes onto these noodles.

And if you make them on typical egg noodles or Chinese egg noodles or udon noodles, it's good, but it doesn't have the quality of the alkaline noodles, which I can't describe them except bouncy.

They're bouncy.

Udon noodles are way too chewy.

Yeah.

You don't want chewy.

You want bouncy and chewy that it's not.

It's not the best thing in the world.

These also make great ramen noodles, because ramen noodles should have that bounce too.

Yeah, it's a really interesting thing, and it's very hard to find, where would anybody find these noodles?

Well, I know Faye got them from themalamarket.

com, which is a place to get them.

LA Okay.

M m a l a mala, me meaning spicy and numbing.

And uh, the woman who started Mala Market with her adopted Chinese daughter, they carry so many wonderful, hard to find ingredients.

They could be.

Another thing making me happy in food this week is almost all the stuff they carry.

I order from them a lot, so check them out.

But what's making you happy in food this week?

One of the things that's making me happy in food this week.

If you follow me on social media, you know about it already.

It's a Chuck roast that Bruce braised and he braised it so gorgeously.

I asked for a Chuck roast and it's turned cold in New England, well, chilly, and it was very rainy this weekend and chilly.

And I wanted really warm comfort food.

So he braised a thick, not one of those thin arm, shoulder Chuck roast, but a.

thick beef chop grows boneless and he braised it in dry cider he used as his aromatics garlic onions and some of those jarred roasted piquillo peppers so that chopped up and then he used allspice and thyme and oregano and salt and pepper and all that stuff and he braised it and at the last hour of the braising he put in skinned and seeded pumpkin in giant chunks like in three inch four inch chunks of seeded, skinned pumpkin, and it was so tasty, so autumnal, so smoky because of the piquillo peppers.

It was a really delicious braise.

If you follow me on social media or even know my Facebook feed, you can find the picture of it there.

And in fact, if you drop it in the comments, someone asked me for the recipe, and I actually kind of Briefly wrote it out.

Oh, it involves browned bacon,

double smoked bacon, which also added to the smokiness.

It's all in there.

You put the bacon back in it.

I mean, you'll see the recipe there.

I think I forget to tell you to put the bacon back in it.

Anyway, just you know what to do.

Put it all back in.

And it braised it for a really long time and it was really delicious.

And I admit made me very happy this week.

Okay, that's our podcast.

So thank you for joining us.

Thanks for being on this journey with us.

We certainly appreciate your support and your listening to us.

We hope we gave you a good time and hope we gave you more good information about food and cooking.

And we hope you'll come to our Facebook page, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, where you can.

See lots of great recipes and videos that I am making about these foods we talk about and join the conversation there and come back for another episode here of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.