Who doesn't get tired of cooking? Sometimes, even for established food writers, the kitchen is just too much to handle.

We've got some answers. We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've written over three dozen cookbooks--so we've experienced a lot of burnout! One of our latest, by the way, is THE LOOK & COOK AIR FRYER BIBLE, with over 700 photos, one for every step of every recipe. We were super burned out after those photo shoots!

After our suggestions for avoiding cooking and kitchen burnout, we've got a one-minute cooking tip about sugar and proteins. Bruce interviews author Katie Parla about her book FOOD OF THE ITALIAN ISLANDS. And we tell you what's making us happy in food this week.

Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & Mark:

[01:09] Avoiding cooking and kitchen burnout: our best tips.

[18:10] Our one-minute cooking tip: A tiny sprinkle of sugar makes lean proteins brown better.

[19:25] Bruce interviews author Katie Parla about her book FOOD OF THE ITALIAN ISLANDS.

[35:17] What’s making us happy in food this week? Chinese sesame paste and great spicy noodles!

Want to check out our latest cooking, THE INSTANT AIR FRYER BIBLE? It's here.

Hi, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast

Cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough.

And together Bruce and I have of course done this podcast, but also

written three dozen cookbooks, including the Instant Air Fryer Bible.

You know, we love Air Fryers because we love Crunch.

We just had.

Eggs and sausage and toast last night, and it was a baguette from the freezer

and we broke it into pieces and shoved it in an air fryer and heated it up.

So it took like two minutes.

You don't have to turn your oven on.

It's so good.

It was crunchy and delicious.

You throw everything in the air fryer basically.

Just throw it in there.

Even your goldfish, whatever.

You throw it all in there.

Okay?

Anyway, the instant air for bible here,

you can make gefilte fish out of that.

Oh no.

Nobody wants warm gefilte fish.

It's a carp stop.

We are gonna be talking about, in this episode of our podcast, cooking Burnout.

We're gonna give you a one minute cooking tip, as we always do.

Bruce has an interview with Katie Parla.

You'll want to check this out.

We seem.

On an Italian tear lately.

We'll talk about that when we get to it.

And of course, what's making us happy in food this week?

So let's get started.

Cooking burnout is a real thing.

People get tired of doing it, and it really peaked during the pandemic, right?

People are stuck at home.

So what do you do?

You know, look, we make about 200 meal related decisions every day.

Wait.

Say what?

Say that again.

Who's this first of?

Who's the we people.

People who cook dinner, people who eat, people who live

in this country make about 200 meal related decisions every day.

That seems like seriously, but think about it, a first world problem.

I mean, seriously, I, maybe I'm wrong,

but.

This podcast is being delivered to the first world.

Well, no, it's actually being delivered globally, but 200 meal.

Wait, wait.

Decide what to eat, how to cook it, how to serve it.

What silverware are you gonna use?

What plates, my gosh, are you gonna use, you're gonna eat at

the table or eat on your lap?

What TV show are you gonna watch while you eat dinner?

Lap?

All of these

paper napkin.

Okay, we're now,

we're out.

All of these.

Look, you go into the supermarket, you.

Thousand varieties of apples.

You see a hundred varieties of That's true chilies.

You see 2000 different boxes of breakfast cereal.

That's true.

So how do you decide what you want to eat?

You make a million decisions.

Well, yes,

and I should say, if you don't own this, I'm the writer.

Mark is the writer, and Bruce is the chef.

And.

I rarely, rarely cook, rarely.

I mean, Bruce makes lunch, he makes dinner, and I am very

conscious of the fact that he is always on the edge of burnout.

Not necessarily always, but he is often on the edge of burnout.

And when we're writing books, when we're in book production mode, He really

gets to burn out stage quickly because

those are the days I say, let's

have pizza tonight.

Yeah.

Because, uh, when we live so rural, you can't even have

pizza delivered where we live.

No.

But we get to go out for it.

But, um, it, it's, I can, I can watch it happen and I have to say that,

um, let me also back up and say that.

Again, I don't cook very much.

And Bruce was out of town doing cooking classes in Boston a few weeks ago.

And , I made eggs and toast for myself for dinner because that

was the level of energy that I could put into my life that day.

So there you go.

I I mean, I, I totally understand the burnout.

Thing I said

earlier, there's like 2000 different boxes of breakfast

cereal in the supermarket.

If you got breakfast burnout, just pick a different box of flavored

Cocoa Crunch and fruit punch and you know, can I, can I, can I marshmallow

cereal?

Put an aside in here?

Mm-hmm.

, I, I think my mom.

Who is still alive.

My mom's 90 and still alive.

And, um, she now lives in an independent living apartment, but

in a larger facility, but she's still living independently at 90.

And I have to say that, what, what would we say, six years ago, pre the pandemic.

So eight years ago, my mom just hit total burnout.

She was done, she was done cooking, but she cooked, she finished

three meals a day for like 70 years.

She did.

I, I will tell you that when I was growing up in Texas, when I.

Excuse me.

When I was coming up in Texas, when I was coming up in Texas, my mother made

a hot breakfast every single morning for my brother and me and my dad, and I mean,

a hot breakfast, like bacon and eggs,

which is why you don't like bacon anymore.

No, no.

I like bacon.

It's just I don't have this thing with it.

As a southerner who ate bacon probably three to four times a week,

I just don't have this thing for it.

But anyway, it doesn't matter.

My mom made a.

Breakfast.

She made us lunches.

She didn't have my dad lunch.

He went out for lunch.

But maybe my brother and me lunches.

And then she made a hot dinner when I was a kid.

We had enough money to eat out once a week and it was a big deal

whether we were going to eat out on Saturday night or we were going

to eat out after church on Sunday.

And that was a big deal, and that's what we had and that's what we could do.

And otherwise, mom cooked.

I vote for Saturday.

What makes it much more festive Well,

it was kind of nice to go after, after church too,

but then you miss.

Love American style

. Mark: True.

That now we're really dating it.

But, uh, it was nice to go out after church too, because, I don't

know, we were all dressed up and we went out for a nice lunch.

But anyway.

Well, what I'm saying is I watched my mom completely burn out.

I mean, oh, she did.

She just, My dad had a terminal cancer diagnosis and basically

my mom didn't cook through it.

No.

She basically just threw her hands in the air and they ate fast

food and takeout and that was it.

I even had to think about getting a meal service in for them when

dad was really sick before he died.

So I'm just saying, all I'm saying by all of this long, personal, boring story.

Yes, said, I do think cooking burnout is a real thing.

It is a real thing.

And when you burn out because you know your mom, like she spent a lifetime

doing it, well, I don't know that any of these suggestions are really

gonna help her because no, she's done, she doesn't want to cook anymore.

But you know, if you're 20 and you're having cooking burnout or 30 or even

40 and you still have young kids, you can't afford to have burnout because

you have to be able to still cook.

So here's some things you could try.

Add a new ingredient, something you've never cooked before.

You might find it fun, you might find it delicious.

So get a different cut of meat.

You know, if you only are used to roasting a whole chicken,

buy chicken wings, mm-hmm.

, or just buy chicken breasts.

Or if you only eat boneless, skinless breasts.

Try chicken legs, try something you've never tried before and

that might pique your interest.

No, I think so.

And I do think part of the getting over burnout has been

the incredible popularity of the Instant pot and the air fryers.

Mm-hmm.

, because I think people had reached a point where they were just very tired.

Of sheep pans and cast iron skillets and pots when they cooked at home

and they were looking for a little excitement, something interesting.

And so instant pot and air fryers hit just at the right moment, it seems to me.

Yeah, because a new appliance, just like a new ingredient.

It's like getting a new toy or buying a new car.

It's anytime you have a new fun gadget, you spend a lot of time

playing with it, checking it out.

At least for me, when I get new kitchen tools, it always makes me want

to make some really fun new things.

I got a new walk and then all I wanted to do was make Chinese food

for a couple of months, right?

So get yourself a new pan, a new non-stick skillet, or get an air

fryer or just get a new really.

Cool kitchen tool that might just trigger you to do something.

I have to say that, uh, when I was in grad school, this is years ago,

so this would be the mid eighties and I was in grad school in Madison and I

started taking bone appetit and this is how I actually got into cooking.

I started taking bon appetit and there were these columns by Brook Dodge Knee.

Oh my goodness, is still around.

And Jinx and Jefferson Morgan.

I wonder if they're still around.

Anyway, there were these columns by these people.

Old bone appetits and they were quick cooking, cooking for two, et cetera.

And I, I would wait for my magazine to show up every month and I would cook

through, especially those columns, but also other things in the magazine.

And part of it I was, I was in grad school, but part of it was that it.

Let me do something creative in the kitchen.

And it was a source of inspiration for me.

It was a way to say, oh, look at me.

I'm making, I, you know, listen, it wasn't anything fancy, but look at me.

I'm making chicken and rice casserole or something.

Well, that is fancy and that's nice, but here's something,

if you've got burnout, don't go back to the same cookbooks you always use

or the same website day after day.

There aren't no more cooking magazines, basically . No.

So don't go back to the same websites or the same books.

Buy yourself a.

Book or check a new cookbook out of the library.

Right.

Or try some new websites you haven't tried before.

Change the source of your inspiration.

It may get you invigorated to do it just like a new appliance

might or a new ingredient.

Yeah.

And, uh, you know, tr there are all kinds of now meal services

and ingredient services out there.

Like, hello Fresh.

Mm-hmm.

. That some of them provide whole meals and some of them provide the pieces of

meals that you have to put together.

I have never tried these services, so I can vouch for none of them , but I do

know that people are into it, and I do

know that it's a thing.

It is, and it'll save you shopping.

And I know shopping is sometimes.

Something that really deters people from wanting to cook.

It cuts down on some of those thousands of decisions you have to make cuz

some of them are made for you.

But here's something also, and

can I stop and say something?

And also I wanna say this, this is a totally experiential and

it's just how I experienced life.

But I think that there is a way that when I lived in New York City, this is gonna

be so silly, but when I lived in New York City, Easier to cook dinner than now when

I live in very, very rural New England.

And here's why.

It doesn't have to do with being remote.

It's that in New York, when you get out of something that you're doing a

rehearsal, your job, I mean, for me, it would be rehearsals or a French class or

something that Bruce would get off work.

I mean, you're gonna, uh, we would often walk home, I would walk

home from rehearsals, uh, I sang with a group and, uh, would come

home, walk home from Rehears.

And you pass all these grocery stores.

Yep.

And so you're like, oh, well you know, I need to pick up a blah blah, blah, blah.

A piece of chicken and this and that for dinner.

And it was, you know, you would come out of work and you would walk across

town from Park Avenue South over to where we lived in Chelsea and you

would pass a lot of grocery stores.

Yep.

And you know, you could go in and get prepared food or whatever.

That is so much easier to me.

I don't know why, and maybe the listeners to this podcast will disagree.

It is so much easier to me to do that than to get in my car after work,

drive to the Kroger parking lot, get out of my car, go in the store.

There's something about that car park out into the store.

That seems hard.

It seems like, oh my God, do I have to do that?

There's, there was something about living in New York that

you just walk past food stores.

Most cities do that, especially, you know, big world

class cosmopolitan cities.

You know, when we go to Europe and we stay in big cities and you go to Paris and you

go to Rome, and you go to London, yeah.

No matter where you're staying, whether you're Airbnb or staying

with friends or in a hotel, you're going to pass tons of little markets.

Big cities have that.

Yeah.

And that inspires you to eat.

You'll see a bakery and there'll be a beautiful bread you'll pass by a

delicate testan or a butcher, and there'll be sausages in the window

or some ground beef and it makes you think, oh, I want a burger tonight.

And it just makes you think of.

About what you want and it makes it a little easier.

It's just different.

I can't explain to you about burnout, but it seems to me that it's different.

And again, maybe listeners to this podcast would disagree with me, but it seems to

be different that when you're walking home from work and you walk past Whole

Foods and you think, uh, you know what?

I want a big salad for dinner.

And you know, you walk in, grab your salad stuff and walk out, that seems

so much different than getting in your car after hit at the office.

And thinking, I want a big salad.

And now having to drive to a Whole Foods park in the parking lot, get out, go in.

It seems harder.

That seems harder.

And even if you do your shopping once a week, then you

have to start thinking about, oh, what am I gonna make on Tuesday?

What am I gonna make on Wednesday?

And here's another tip, another piece of advice.

Especially if you're shopping once a week, don't pressure yourself

to reinvent the wheel every night.

Right.

You can eat the same thing a couple nights in a row if your kids love burgers.

Yeah.

Or your kids love, you know, fried chicken fingers.

Yeah.

And you oven fry them or air fry them.

It's okay to make them a couple nights in a row.

Don't feel like you have to pressure yourself to make

something different every night.

I think that's really important.

I, but we've been talking about this endlessly, so I'm

gonna forget up on our podcast.

I saw an interview that Oprah Winfrey did oh, several years ago, but I just

saw it on YouTube and she said something that has just stuck with me for weeks.

Bruce and I have been talking about this endlessly.

Oprah said that when she began her career as an interviewer, you know,

for her talk show, the basic question she thought that sat at the bottom

of everyone was, am I good enough?

Am I good enough to do this at whatever I'm doing?

Right?

Whatever it is to dealing with my children, dealing with life deal.

Am I good enough to handle it?

Am I good enough to be an actor?

Am I good enough to be a singer?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, all different kinds.

And she said basically when she started her career, she felt like that was the

baseline question that everybody had.

Mm-hmm.

is, am I good enough?

Over the course of her career, she claimed that the question changed

and the question by the end of her interviewing career and when she was

giving this interview, the basic question under everyone had become, am I okay?

Hmm.

And the difference between am I good enough versus am I okay?

She was saying this is the pressure, stress, and craziness of what has

happened in the last 30 years, and we're all now at this position

where our baseline question is a.

Okay.

Is it really okay right now?

And what that requires is self-care.

And self-care.

Yeah.

Really means take care of yourself, take care of your kids without

the pressure of worrying about making this so new for dinner.

Right?

So, make the same thing, you know, they like, it's not a problem to

make a salad three nights in a row.

If you like salad, it's not a problem to give yourself.

grilled cheese, if that's what you like for dinner.

Yeah.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

And what that leads into is don't expect too much from a meal.

Right.

Dinner is not gonna change your life,

man.

We really are at the question of, am I okay?

Mm-hmm.

, don't expect too much because life is just, feels so crazy.

Right?

It feels so.

I, I mean, I know that I'm older and I'm more susceptible to it,

but life just seems so much more insane than it was 30 years ago.

It is.

It is.

And if you expect too much from one meal, you're only gonna be disappointed.

Yeah.

You're only gonna beat yourself up.

Yeah.

Remember, dinner doesn't have to be fancy or elaborate.

Assembly only dinners are fine.

You can even consider doing a healthy snack buffet for dinner.

Take out the hummus and the crackers, and the olives, and

the cheese, and the pickles.

It's delicious, it's easy, and you don't have to do anything.

I, I, I wanna tell you that a lot of days from lunch, Bruce will make,

uh, simple chopped salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers with olive

oil, red wine, vinegar, salt and pepper.

That's.

and then he chops a little bit of that up.

And then we have prepared hummus.

I put some, I crumble some feta on my salad.

Olives, pickles.

We have olives from the olive bar.

We have pickles, we have those pepper and cini.

We have those little red peppers that are the Pep Doos.

We have a lot of stuff off the salad bar to go along with it.

Sometimes if I don.

Fat out on my salad.

I'll have a little piece of cheese with my meal.

You'll even grab a piece of sliced cheese.

If I have in will in the house from my, from Delhi County, you'll,

we had a photo shoot for the incident air fryer book months ago,

and we had a lot of sliced cheese in that, cause we were making

grill grilled cheese and all.

I would literally just peel off a piece of sliced cheese, sliced

American styles with a Swiss cheese.

Mm-hmm.

and I would put it on my plate with the stuff, I mean, In other words we're, we

are cookbook writers and we are doing it as easy as we can while trying to get

good, fresh nutrition inside of ourselves.

But that means that one week, one week out of the last two years, I made homeless.

One week, otherwise we buy it.

Yeah, I know.

And I know, listen, my made homeless was better than the store

bought stuff, but you know what?

Come on, gimme a break.

I just look for what's on sale at the supermarket.

Yeah.

And I just pick up cartons of it.

It's all about self care, making sure that you are taking

care of yourself and your family and not putting any stress under.

Not putting yourself under any stress about making dinner.

It can be as simple as crackers and hummus, and you can avoid

some serious cooking burnout.

Before we get to the next segment of our podcast, let me

tell you that we have a newsletter.

Comes out, oh, every one to two weeks.

It's a little sporadic.

It says I can do it.

. Right now, I am just coming off eight weeks of teaching.

Gertrude Stein, Sigmund Freud, and Marcel Perus.

And believe me, I couldn't do a newsletter this week, so , because I was at the

last Prust and I just couldn't handle it.

So every one to two weeks, let's say, you can sign up for that by going to our.

Bruce and mark.com, and there's a sign up for the newsletter feature on that page.

We've seen dozens of people sign up for that newsletter recently.

Mm-hmm.

. And let me just say that I've set it up so I can't see you and I

can't see your email, and I can't sell it because I can't see it.

I have no.

Access to it.

And anytime you wanna cancel at the bottom of an email, there's

a cancel this email at any point.

This email, um, you know, list.

Get me off the list at any point, you can get back off of it.

But if you go to Bruce and mark.com, you can sign up for our

newsletter there and find out more.

It's done a rehash of this podcast instead.

It's, oh, I don't know.

There's been Bruce's knitting patterns, there's been recipes mm-hmm.

that don't even come up on this podcast.

Mm-hmm.

, there's been bits about life, about my dad dying.

Um, bits about our.

But, uh, just a simple newsletter that comes out every Monday,

every other Monday, depending on whether Prust is in my life or not.

I'm next on the podcast, our one minute cooking tip as his traditional, what

is it?

It's all about browning meat.

A tiny sprinkle of sugar on lean meats and fish will help with the

browning, so you can avoid overcooking.

There's very little fat.

This is really.

In to me in fish filets.

Yeah.

Very little fat.

And so if you want to get it brown, the only way you're gonna do that to

get the good mayard reaction, right?

Yeah.

Of browning.

And the skillet is to let it overcook.

So instead you put a tiny sprinkle of sugar and

we are talking for a fish filet, a pinch, a quarter teaspoons.

Way too much.

Yeah.

Just a pinch.

Literally a pinch.

Way too much.

And that will help a brown without overcooking it.

Yeah.

The, again, lean proteins, as Bruce said, they have a problem

browning and the grill is really problematic for them cuz it's so hot.

It's really, you know, if you have those four ounce, boneless skinless

chicken breasts and you have a grill up at 700 degrees, they're

done at about a second and a half.

I mean, they're really hardly get brown if you were just too sprinkled.

Embarrassed, sprinkling of sugar along with your salt and

pepper on the outside of them.

They would brown up nicely.

And let's face it, you eat with your eyes as well as your mouth.

So there you go.

You want it brown?

Okay, up next Bruce's interview with Katie Parla.

She owns a f.

Italian food tourism company.

She can be your personal guide if you want, and she's the author of the brand

new book, food of the Italian Islands.

Today we're speaking with Katie Parla.

She is an Italian food expert, the cookbook author of many wonderful

Italian cookbooks, and she runs a personal food guide service in

Rome where she lives and she has a.

Called the food of the Italian Islands, recipes from the sun Bake beaches,

coastal villages, and rolling hillsides of Sicily, Sardinia and beyond.

Welcome, Katie Ciao.

How are you?

Uh, ciao.

So you live in Rome, but you write all about Italian food

and you're from New Jersey.

So tell me a bit about your journey.

Well, I grew up in an Italian American family in New Jersey that like

so many identifies with Italy while knowing absolutely nothing about it.

. And so I didn't visit Italy until I was 16.

I went with my Latin class and just instantly became obsessed

with Rome in particular.

And so from the time I was a sophomore in high school, I devoted myself to

studying Italy and Italian culture.

Ultimately moving to Rome 20 years ago in 2003.

Um, and that's what started my path on a more sort of academic approach to food.

I was always into food, grew up in a restaurant.

dad had a restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey until 2022.

Did my master's in Italian astronomic culture and assimilate certificate so

I could actually have some credentials to back up the job that I wanted to do.

Was your family behind your going to Rome?

I mean, yes and no.

I think they were a little bit confused, um, and probably didn't think I

was serious when I declared as a 16 year old that I would move to Rome

eventually and live there forever.

But jokes.

Well, your new book, uh, food of the Italian Islands is really beautiful

and the recipes are mouthwatering and you start the book off with

Sardinia, and which as you explained, is actually a series of small islands.

And tell me, Katie, what's unique about the food of Sardinia

compared to the rest of Italy?

Well Sardinia proper is the second largest island in the Mediterranean.

And like so many of.

Islands that I talk about in the book isn't alone, right?

In the southwest there are more islands in the Northwest.

In the Northeast.

And so I think if you wanna define Sardinian culture, um,

it's a bit challenging because it is so varied and diverse.

. But let's say in general, the food traditions date back millennia.

It's a very Durham wheat based society.

So there are a lot of breads and PaaS made with Durham wheat

that's grown on the island.

Mm-hmm.

, there's lots of pork.

So much pork, usually spit roasted, often suckling.

Yeah.

And, uh, there's a lot of, uh, you know, herbs and, and produce and legum.

and probably I would say the most famous ingredient that leaves the

island is bottarga, which is cured mullet row from a, a tradition

dating back to Phoenician times.

So, you know what sets it apart?

You probably think, okay, Katie Parla.

I've heard of all those things in other parts of Italy too.

But the way that they're combined, uh, and the way that they're

seasoned is uniquely Sardinian.

And I'll give you an example of bread.

There's.

in every Italian region.

Yeah, some excel at bread more than others,

But if you look at the breads in Sicily for sort for example, uh, a lot of

the bakeries are selling pretty simple loaves with shapes that you can identify

with words that are common, whereas in, uh, like I'm thinking round loaves

or long sesame, uh, sesame rolled Lo.

. Um, but in Sarnia, the breads are incredibly ornate, even sculptural

and serve, you know, a dual purpose because they're not just edible.

They're also, uh, used for religious devotion.

And so on certain holidays you'll find that sardinians will craft these amazingly

ornate breads that have sometimes really abstract forms like some look.

, I don't know, like a dinosaur project that like a kid did in

elementary school and others are much more sort of visually expressive.

And I'm thinking of the bread in the book that John Franco de Tori made.

There's a whole section on Sardinian breads, uh, and you

can actually watch a video.

Cuco that shows you how she makes it.

And she starts by making a heart out of dough.

Mm-hmm.

. And then to that, she attaches ears of grain, birds, interlocking

wedding rings, um, flowers.

I mean, she makes lilies out of dough roses.

And it's a process that takes an hour to make the entire thing.

And it's, it's the most amazing thing to see.

And you don't find that anywhere else.

And you don't find, uh, videos very often with QR codes in books.

So that's really nice that your book really takes the readers right to

Italy with you to see the things you've seen for you to really show them the

beauty of the food of these islands.

Now, we've all heard of Sicily.

And it too is made up of many smaller islands, but I don't think many

Americans know about the Pegy Islands.

And where are they and what's their culinary claim to fame?

I highly recommend pulling up a map.

Alternatively, you can turn to page 12 of Food of the Italian Islands,

and you'll see that like what, what you might call the mainland of Sicily,

um, has the Aian Islands in the north.

and if you sort of head south towards North Africa, um, that's where

you find the islands in question.

Um, they coincidentally all have names that start with l Za Lump and Le Naza.

And what's interesting about them is that they weren't really

settled until about 150 years ago.

Of course, in antiquity, people were using them as jumping off points and

fortresses, but they're really out there.

they're pretty susceptible to, uh, poor communication and travel from bad weather.

So it wasn't until a, a Spanish settlement and Spanish being the, the ruling,

uh, domination in southern Italy, including Sicily in the 19th century.

They established little colonies there and so people grew

what they could grow, right?

Things that are growing in inhospitable conditions,

particularly classic of the island.

are lentils are harvested in the, uh, hot summer and then dried so

that they can service food in the cellar for the rest of the year.

Uh, and Lenos in particular has a very prestigious, if nearly

microscopic lentil production.

It's not that big of an island.

And so in order to really enjoy these, you have to either be on the island or in the.

TRA or gourmet shops of Sicily that are lucky enough to get their allocation.

And are they multiple kinds of lentils or there's one?

Is it a singular kind of lentil grown there?

. Katie: So to my knowledge,

I can't really distinguish the difference between lentil varieties

if they're the same color.

Mm-hmm.

, but they're sort of these brownish green lentils, super tiny.

You cook them kind of in the same way all the time.

You hammer them in liquid until they virtually burst apart.

Um, and the other dishes that you might find that are really

typical, of the, of the island.

There's a pesto from Le Noosa, um, which is not that unsimilar from some

in mainland Sicily that is tomatoes, uh, are present and herbs take a backseat.

Hmm.

Um, whereas, you know, Lumpa is a, is a much more touristed island.

It doesn't have many people who live there year round.

And so when you visit the restaurants and cafes and fry shops and baker.

What you find are foods that are really heavily influenced by mainland Sicily.

So you'll find eggplant parmesan A, which are rice croquettes filled with

meat and P ragu, um, all sorts of potato dishes and essentially lots of things

that are easy to cook in single portion aluminum containers so that vendors

can sell them to people headed to the beach cuz the beach doesn't have a lot

of services, so you gotta self cater

most of us.Couldn't imagine Italian food without pasta.

But you write in your book how Pasta was cooked and served on the islands of Italy

centuries before the rest of the country.

Why was that?

And what were some of these early pasta dishes like?

So we do definitely have historical documents that testified to pasta

consumption in certain geographical parts of Italy, dating back to the Ren.

Um, you could argue even that, you know, the Greeks introduced pasta to

Italy, but as something that defined a cultural identity, that's not something

that emerges until the 20th century.

And it's hard to imagine Italy without coffee and pasta.

Mm-hmm.

. But those are po both features of fascist era production and propaganda.

And that's precisely why they're so heavily symbolic in Italian culture today.

Dried pasta, um, in the form.

Um, was produced so that people in ninth century, uh, Sicily, and it's called Frak

in, uh, Sarnia, but again, ninth century Sarnia could use D Wheat in the future.

You would mill it all in the summertime and if you turned it

into cous cous or another pasta and.

it was a, a sellable, um, product with a long shelf life.

And this tradition is introduced to both of those islands by the Arabic,

uh, culture that, uh, conquered the islands and influenced the food and

agriculture in a really considerable way.

Just think that there were huge pasta factories outside of PMA that

would've been producing dried past.

Something that wasn't introduced to the mainland in a large scale

way until the late 18th, early 19th centuries in the Bay of Naples area.

Hmm.

I think that probably isn't a surprise a lot of people to hear that.

Now I wanna talk about some recipes in the book.

I mean, the recipes are mouthwatering to read.

The photos are gorgeous.

You've got braised rabbit with white wine and olive oil, thin and crispy veal

cutlets with a squeeze of fresh lemon.

You've got tomatoes split and roasted with Parmesan and breadcrumbs,

and the always delicious flatbread with tomatoes and onions.

Katie, is there one flavor, one ingredient that you think Italian

Island cooking can't be without?

Oh my God, that's the hardest question anyone's

ever asked about this book.

I mean, I think that there are, there are, there's not just a single one.

Right?

Okay.

I chose to write about these islands to show what they have in common in spite

of having really disparate cultures.

Mm-hmm.

, um, Well as to showcase what makes them unique.

So there isn't even a universal fat, like in some parts of the

islands they use olive oil and other parts they use rendered pork fats.

Throughto, one of my favorite ingredients.

Hmm.

I mean, I would say generally the island flavors are land-based.

So if I could say land-based ingredients, then that's it.

You would think there would be tons of fish.

Mm-hmm.

. But fish was in the sea, which was super dangerous.

Uh, not just because of weather.

, but because there were invaders and pirates and just generally the, the, the

sea is a, is a really terrifying place, particularly before modern technological

navigation instruments emerge.

Um, and plus fish is super perishable.

So where you do find fish in a lot of historic island recipes, it's

dried or salted, you know, cured in some way with salt to preserve it.

Mm-hmm.

. Um, but whether you're.

Za eating lentils, um, or, uh, snia eating roasted lamb, or isia eating rabbit.

The signature iconic dishes of these islands are really rooted in the

territory of the land rather than the sea.

Fascinating.

And finally, desserts.

I'm thrilled you have desserts in here too.

Everything from making Euro own marza pan fruits to simple sweet

pistachio spread to drizzle on breaded that just took my breath away.

It looked so amazing, and you have proven that desserts don't have to be elaborate

to be satisfying and delicious, but if.

Katie Parlor.

We're gonna spend some time making a more complex Sweet.

What would your go-to dessert from your book be?

I mean, the marza pan fruits are not simple because it's not

a matter of making the marza pan.

You also have to mold it into the shape of a fruit and then paint it.

And I'm like particularly bad at that part.

Um, I've got all the molds and you can too.

If you go to polar mode, the book tells you exactly where to go to shop for.

and you can make marza pan artichokes and eggplant and strawberries

and peaches that have split open.

They've got molds for everything.

Mm-hmm.

. But I think it takes a special talent one that I do not have to paint

them in a way that looks realistic.

Like I can paint the strawberry red.

Mm-hmm.

, but not in a way that's, Sort of omata and nuanced with different gradients.

I'm more like, I'm more like the analogy for the bread that

looks like a five-year-old made it . That's, that's my marza pan vibe.

Thankfully, we shot the marza pan fruit, which is called at

a convent where they're experts.

Well, they're beautiful and the recipe for making the Mars

Band doesn't look that complicated.

I can't wait to jump in and do it.

I can't wait to make half the recipes in this book.

Katie Parla, thank you so much for this beautiful book,

food of the Italian Islands.

Um, you are a wonder and an amazing authority on Italian food.

People need to know that they can actually travel Italy with you and experience it.

But until they do that, they can experience it in your new book,

food of the Italian Islands.

Hey, thanks for spending some time with me today.

Well, that was fascinating.

Only because, and this is something that I'm gonna admit in the podcast,

I have never been to any Italian islands except some Venetian ones.

yeah.

I want to go so badly now.

I have never been to Sicily and I have never been to Sarnia and I

Sarnia wanna go to Sardinia, so, Bad.

My shrink.

Oh, now I'm saying too much.

When I, we lived in New York, my shrink took a month off every year and she

painted on at a house in Sardinia and would rent a house and paint in Sardinia.

And it always sounded like the, the best possible life

to paint for a month on Saren.

I look forward to gonna

Sardinia and eating.

For a month.

Yeah, that sounds fabulous.

Okay, before we get to our, our final segment of this podcast, let

me remind you that it would be great if you would rate this podcast,

if you would subscribe to it.

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Great podcast.

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Thank you very much for that.

Our final segment, as is traditional.

What's making us happy in food this week?

Chinese sesame paste.

Oh, it's different than tahini.

It's toasted.

Usually it's a darker brown.

It's a much more intense sesame flavor.

I made.

Fabulous noodle dish this week,

which is gonna be my favorite thing, making me happy and food this week.

So please go

on And, uh, this, this paste just thickens in flavors and it's delicious.

So rather than tahini or peanut butter, get yourself some Chinese sesame paste.

Yeah.

So my favorite thing, what's making me most happy and food this week

was this noodle dish Bruce made.

Interestingly, I had done, and if you listen to this podcast, you

know, this months ago I did a big Iranian dinner party with all kinds

of weird takes on traditional Iranian food that I kind of came up with.

And we had gone to a Middle Eastern market in a city bed an hour away from

us, and uh, I had bought some Iranian dried pasta noodles, and they're

very different from Italian pasta.

Thicker chewier and much saltier, almost

like udan.

They, they reminded me of udan and I used those and it's very salty.

I used those as a base for this noodle dish.

And the base, the, the basic recipe I followed was from Chinese home cooking.

And we've had the, the author of that on this podcast before, and it's a vegan,

uh, Chinese book, and she had blended together sesame, Chinese sesame paste.

Dark soy and light soy and vinegar.

And I added some other really interesting things like, um, some

fermented, uh, mustard greens into it.

And I tossed that up with the noodles, with dried tofu and

cucumbers and we just loved it.

Yeah,

it was really good.

It really made me extraordinarily happy.

We ate a lot of it and uh, it was just so unbelievably fine and in many ways simple.

So.

Podcast for this week I'm cooking Bruce and Mark, thanks for

being with us on this journey.

Thanks for taking the podcast time with us.

We know the podcast Scape is really full podcast scape.

Listen to that, really full of all kinds of choices, and we very much

appreciate that you've been here with us

and hope that you will come back.

By downloading another episode next week and the week after that

and just subscribe and they'll be downloaded automatically to your app.

So we'll see you again on another episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.