We've got a packed show with travel, memoir, recipes, food tips, the whole works.

We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've got three dozen published titles under our (ever widening) belts. We've sold nearly one and a half million books in our career. And we're still ready to talk more about food.

On this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK, we've got a one minute cooking tip about complimenting the cook. Bruce interviews Terra Kiros, the author of NOW AND THEN, a food and travel memoir with recipes, based on her extraordinary career. And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week: pastrami and a vegan Bakewell tart.

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

[00:51] Our one-minute cooking tip: compliment the person who has cooked for you.

[03:56] Bruce's interview with Tessa Kiros, legendary author about her new memoir and travelogue with recipes, NOW AND THEN.

[24:46] What’s making us happy in food this week: pastrami and a vegan Bakewell tart, thanks to Philip Khoury.

Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein and this is the podcast cooking with Bruce and Mark.

And I'm Mark Scarborough and together with Bruce we have written three

dozen cookbooks, are writing the 37th, we have sold almost a million

and a half copies of cookbooks.

books over here at one eight New York publishers.

It sounds like bragging, but it's just kind of astounding to both of us.

Neither of us ever thought this career would go in the direction it did.

We hoped that we would publish a few cookbooks, never imagining we

would publish this many, but this is our podcast about food and cooking.

It includes a one minute cooking tip.

Bruce has got an interview with Tessa Kuros.

She's the author of the new book now and then, and we'll let you know.

What's making us happy in food this week.

So let's get started.

Our one minute cooking tip today is not so much about cooking as it is

about eating and it's about eating with people and it's about being nice.

Isn't that the reason you cook is to eat?

Maybe not.

So here's the tip.

compliment the cook.

Oh, it doesn't matter if you don't.

That's with an eye, right?

And never say nice things.

Not stand next to like compliment within the cook.

Like be a part of the cook's world.

Say nice things.

Nice things.

It doesn't even matter if you don't like the food.

Someone took time from their day to plan, shop and put together a meal for you.

to enjoy.

I'm going to say about this, that Bruce has most of the cooking in our

house and I make sure that I thank him for dinner every night sometime.

I, I, do I do it every single night?

No, I probably forget.

I probably get lost in some stupid TV streaming series and I get lost in it or

I get lost lately in, I don't know, crazy things like salt burn and I maybe forget,

but mostly I try to thank him every night for dinner sometime during the night.

Even if he doesn't like it.

When do I not like it?

I'm just saying,

the point is, even if you don't like it, You have a when

do I not

like it?

You say thank you, always.

I mean, yes, there are a few things that you like that I don't.

And this is a long standing thing.

And now here comes the confession on our part.

podcast.

It's going to make the time go much longer for this woman to cooking dip.

But I don't like, Oh gosh, ground beef or what we called loose meat.

When I was a child, I do not really like much ground beef.

I like hamburgers, but they're dead raw.

I, in other words, what I'm telling you is I don't like meatloaf.

So, um, Bruce does like meatloaf a lot, and I'm happy when he cooks it.

Once a year, I make meatloaf.

Oh, it's more than once a year, but it's fine.

It's absolutely fine.

Ah, will it kill me to eat it?

Absolutely not.

He still says thank you.

I do.

I still say thank you, even for meatloaf.

I prefer meat.

balls.

But that's a whole different matter entirely, but mostly

ground meat and I are not friends except dead raw and hamburgers.

So there you go.

That's our one minute cooking tip, which got into personal narrative and I don't

know crap about our relationship, but tons of stuff anyway, let's pass on

to Bruce's interview with Tessa Kuros.

But before we do.

Let's just say that it would be great if you could rate this podcast.

If you could write a review of it, even great podcast or nice banter or

whatever, something easy like that does an amazing thing for the analytics.

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On our own and on our own effort.

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Okay.

Up next Bruce's interview with Tessa Kuros.

She's the author of the new travelogue memoir recipe book.

Now and then

I'm speaking with Tessa Kiros.

She's a food writer originally from London.

Now she lives in Tuscany with her family.

She has worked in restaurants around the world and Tessa has written 11

books about the foods from Italy and Greece and she has a beautiful

new book out called Now and Then, a collection of recipes for always.

Welcome Tessa.

Thank you for having me.

I love that you write in your book right up front, you talk about

your kitchen and you say there is no method here, just familiarity.

What do you mean by that?

You know, when you're sometimes invited to cook in another kitchen or something

and you don't know where the knives are and the sense of your own kitchen at

home without having to ask anybody where anything is, it's just incredible to me.

So, I mean, if I'm looking for the cumin in my spice box, I know

exactly which corner it is in, even if I've turned the basket around.

And I can, I can, I can do it blindfolded.

I can take out all the spices I need to make.

a dish.

And that sense of familiarity is incredible.

But it takes a certain, you know, it takes a little bit of time to

create your kitchen like that.

And especially when you make something many times and you use five or six

different herbs or spices for a dish, you, you put them back sort of in the same way

so that the next time you make the dish.

You know, where to reach for your, for those spices, you know, where you're

measuring spoons are, your wooden spoon, and things that actually make

the task so much easier in cooking.

Your book is full of delicious recipes, but it's also full of surprises.

I mean, many cookbooks start off with breakfast, but you chose to start off

First recipe in the book, beautifully crisped oven roasted lamb chops.

Why start the book off there?

You know, sometimes I put things in the book which are not necessarily obvious to

others, but it's a special detail for me.

So my first chapter in the book is called Things That Stay, and the ones that

have stayed with me and that I carry with me, and I love to make them always.

I will always love to make them.

So, the first recipe is my mother's sippy, her lamb chops

that she made when I was young.

And I thought how wonderful it is to start off a book with my mother, who

gave me life, and to finish the book off in the roses chapter with a recipe from

my father, George's Feel Good Rose Tea.

So, for me, it was a question of.

Encasing the alpha and the omega, the, the, the beginning of everything and

encasing it all in, in between that embracing everything in between that,

that was a little gift to myself and to my mom, if she noticed and, and

to my dad, I don't know if they have no, that no one has mentioned it.

You're the first person that has mentioned it.

Well, you write in the headnote of that recipe that this often

at your mom's was breakfast.

That's also a bit of a surprise.

Yes, it is.

And that was, uh, something that a few of my friends remembered that

I think I wrote somewhere in the book that they would arrive at my

house having had their breakfast.

And my mom would be there saying, hurry up and finish your breakfast, which would be.

It would be anything, sometimes some oatmeal, or other times it

would be leftovers from the night before, which I think is great fun.

And I actually found her one day with my, with my daughters when they were small.

And I came home and I said, Oh, Cassiel Yasmin must be hungry.

And it was like six or seven o'clock in the evening.

I said, no, they're not hungry because I've just given them porridge.

So there you go.

She doesn't have a strict schedule.

And it actually is a wonderful thing to do.

You know, sometimes now when I don't know what to have for dinner, a bowl of oats.

With maple syrup

is a beauty.

I love breakfast for dinner.

And dinner for breakfast.

In some places, even in Thailand.

If you go to Thailand, you can have anything for breakfast.

So I like the idea of not being set in my ways.

And as long as, you know, you're eating good food and enjoying

yourself, I think everything is great.

Tessa, there's a welcoming feeling behind so many of the recipes in your book.

Even if we don't know exactly what something is, it still feels familiar,

like your warm Malva pudding cake.

It looks like something we know, but so many American cooks have

probably never heard of this.

So what is it and why do you find it so comforting?

I

like that particular pudding because I think it reminds us all

of, you know, like a hug in a bowl, something that is warm and sweet.

that'll just make you feel good.

So that recipe for me reminds me of a time sitting outside in South Africa

with a fire going, sometimes lucky enough to be on a safari or watching out

for wild animals early on in the day.

So I have a memory of that.

I try to share the feeling and the context.

Can you describe what is a Malva pudding?

It's a, it's a cake actually.

So something similar to, let's say, a sticky toffee pudding or a

mixture between a pudding and a cake.

So it has some unusual ingredients.

It has vinegar and also a little bit of apricot jam.

Now, I love the randomness of that.

It makes me think that probably somebody was making it and they just had a couple

of these things around and you don't necessarily taste any of those things.

So I have said, in fact, you know, use Apricot jam or any other jam

that you like, because I don't like to restrict people too much

unless it's absolutely necessary.

The one thing that I am strict about over there is the size of the dish

because If you use a bigger dish, it's going to become a lot flatter.

So if anything, use a smaller dish, although I don't think

you can get much smaller than my dish that I use over there.

Now, while the cake is baking, you make a warm caramel toffee sauce

that I put a couple of tablespoons of whiskey in and cream is added to that.

And when the cake comes warm out of the oven, poke holes with a skewer all over

it and then immediately pour this hot sauce over it, which you think this is

never going to absorb all of the sauce.

But it does.

You can even hold back a little of it and serve it on the plate.

It's lovely warm, but even not that completely cooled down, I must say.

That sounds like an amazing breakfast.

It does.

I think I'll try it for breakfast.

It comes out a really cute, small cake with this welcoming,

as you say, qualities about it.

And I think, you know, you can have a tiny piece or you can have a bigger piece.

Go back for seconds.

Tessa, your book is filled with gorgeous salads and fresh vegetable dishes.

How important are vegetables to your daily cooking?

I love any kind of vegetable or salad, and I feel to me sometimes

that a meal is almost incomplete without a salad or a vegetable.

I feel like I cannot get enough of them.

So this book of mine actually is about the way that I'm eating these days.

So I'm not a vegetarian.

But as you will see that chapter two, nowadays.

This is taking everybody's changing dietary needs into account, you

know, like people that have got a bit more of a gluten intolerance or

trying to cut down on a bit of dairy.

So I think at least let's mix in these things.

Let's filter them slowly into our lives and have this as the

bulk of what we are eating.

In that chapter, you have a recipe for grilled asparagus and artichokes

with goat cheese and lemon.

That is a dish I think I could eat every day.

Yeah, me too.

Is there another vegetable dish that you could eat every day?

I can eat all of them every day.

Those salads, for example, the summer salad, even in winter.

And there is the green plate, which I absolutely love,

which is just a collection of boiled or steamed vegetables.

And of course everybody can use whatever they like.

And I just love the play on color.

It's just all green.

So I have it garnished with fresh mint and basil.

And it has a dressing of avocado, tahini, and it's just beautiful.

I can, I can put that on anything and I use any vegetables over there.

So if you don't have seasonal things that I've mentioned in there, use anything.

Do it with just one vegetable or even over just a green salad.

But for me, I cannot get enough for me.

A plate like that is a dream bowl, a dream platter mixture of vegetables

with avocado, lemon tahini.

And I think that many people would agree that.

It's difficult to, to top that.

You have two daughters who are grown now, but they grew up in Europe.

And I want to ask, were they picky eaters?

And do you have advice for parents who face that dilemma?

Yes, they were picky eaters, I must say.

My, my eldest daughter, Yasmin, the 25 year old, at the age of five, decided that

she was shocked about the food chain when she got home from nursery school one day.

And she decided to give up eating meat completely.

So at the age of five, I was thrown into trying to get proper nourishment and, and,

and not knowing the way to go about it.

So at that time, that was quite tricky.

And she, she still loved the taste and the smell of meat of certain kinds of meat.

But she was, it was an ethical reason.

So she was, she's not a vegetarian any longer, but she's still very picky.

About things like that.

So I respected that and I went along with her on everything and I tried

with whatever I could to make sure that she was getting the best nourishment

and that she was enjoying her food.

And my younger daughter, Cassia has never liked when she was small.

Texture in food.

So if we were having a soup, like an astronomy, she would

always want hers pureed.

So I did, I always encourage to go along with.

With the different tastes of people, because we all have different tastes.

Some people might grow out of them.

Children might grow up to them.

Some might not, I would say, don't worry about it.

And the other thing I used to always tell them was listen to your stomach and listen

to yourself about what you want to eat.

One day Yasmin put her ear close to her stomach and she said to me, Hey mom.

My tummy is telling me, oh, I think it needs some chocolate.

And I thought that was really, really special.

But I think that we do need to listen to ourselves because we're so far

pushed often out of tune to things like finish everything that's on your plate.

I never did.

I never did that.

I never do that.

Because I think even if there is a little bit left, you can repurpose it.

Somebody else might still be hungry in your family that

might want a scoop of that.

Um, I just think that we should listen to our bodies.

carefully and listen to the other people to what they're telling you,

which is exactly what I was referring to before about the nowadays chatter.

Somebody comes along and says, I'm less tolerant these days, or I want to leave

out some milk for now, or some gluten.

What can we do?

We need to be armed with picks and things.

So when my children were small, I would also, you know, put food in colors

on their plate and they responded well to that, or they like to see

the initials in, in, in something.

So where I could make a pie and, and make a little flower or an initial, their

initials on it, they like to be included in as far as they're interested to go.

And so the other thing that I always do is I often put food on the table that

everybody can build their own, whether it be a souvlaki or a taco or a sandwich or.

Anything that people can take from the middle and add as much as they want.

And then they feel like they have contributed.

Tessa, there's a thread of East Indian flavors that run through

your book, from chapati to mango pickle, uh, to chickpea chole, a

thick tomato gravy with chickpeas.

Where does your love of exotic flavors come from?

Well, I think it comes from having a mixed background, first of all,

which is, you know, we always had a totally mixed background.

So I was born in London.

My mom is from Finland.

My dad is Greek Cypriot.

Uh, I grew up in South Africa and I live in, in Tuscany now.

So my love of travel and of different cultures is, I

think, comes a lot from that.

And what, the one thing that I always knew while I was at school, I didn't

have a very clear idea of what I would be studying, but I knew, the one thing

that I knew is that I wanted to travel.

So as soon as I finished school in South Africa, I left and I, I

settled to travel at the same time doing a correspondence degree.

And the subjects that I chose were anthropology, sociology, some science

of religion, so Buddhism, Hinduism.

So these were the things that interested me.

At the same time, I was working in a kitchen in London, first

in London, and then in Greece.

And then I spent some time in New Orleans, as you'll see that chapter of

New Orleans in my book, which I was just.

Passing by and realized that the jazz festival was on, so I decided

to stay there and stop and learn.

So in the same way, my interest in Asian, Asian cuisine, so I have

a chapter on Thailand in there, India, I'm particularly fascinated.

I think it is one cuisine that literally can sustain the spices

and the abundance of spices, and particularly how the vegetarian dishes.

are addressed in India and the joy of color and the spices.

So for me, that is something that I always follow.

And it's such a, a mixture of, of, of things.

And at the same time, it's balancing and grounding.

And I find it incredible.

I'm very, very drawn to those flavors.

Your global view of food, as you say, took you to New Orleans, Thailand, Mexico.

Is there a common thread throughout these different cuisines that attracts you?

Is there a flavor thread or an approach to food that you find

similar throughout the world?

I don't think that there is one culture that I find less interesting than another.

I'm interested in the way that people from a place cook.

So, for me, my greatest joy It's to be in a country with somebody from the

place cooking the way that they do, because I think that there is so much

in that and it's the way that they choose what they're going to make.

It's the way, you know, when, when I'm in Italy, I watch my mother in law making

her tomato or her, her ragu or something.

And they have a certain method in the way they do it, whether it is the

generous use of olive oil in Italy.

Whereas in another country, like in Finland, that doesn't, that's not an

inherent given that all of all will be so readily available everywhere.

So the way that people use the things that they have been brought

up with and what is so readily available to them and the things that

they know, the familiarity of it.

I find is what inspires me tremendously.

And that takes us back to where we started talking about the

familiarity of your own kitchen.

There's something about being able to produce beautiful food

when you're familiar with the ingredients, with your environment.

I also talked about the surprises in your book.

There's a dish that surprised me.

And it's in the part of the book where you say what you would love most or

miss most if you were to leave Italy.

And you offered up a recipe, something I've never experienced, red wine risotto.

Tell me about the dish.

The only place I've ever really tasted it, I think, is from my father in law, who

Was a, an incredible chef and a sommelier.

So he came round one day to our house and he said he was making the

red wine risotto and he bought his particular wine that he wanted to use.

And I do say in there, make sure that, you know, it's a good rounded bordering on

sweet kind of wine, not a dry, you know, use something that you love the taste of.

And it's important also to let wine.

to add it slowly and let it absorb completely.

So it's not just going to be like a boiled wine dish.

You know, it needs to absorb each little bit that you put in it, let it go slowly.

So there's very few ingredients in the dish, onions, risotto,

rice, salsiccia, and the red wine.

So those ingredients have to be amazing.

And then of course, afterwards it's the butter and the Parmesan

that is added at the end, the slow process of making the risotto.

It's something that I was surprised by myself, and I thought, wow,

what is this simplicity over here?

But the Italians are masters at that, taking something, making

it so beautiful, uncomplicated.

And, you know, the way they spread out their food as well,

so they would maybe serve that.

That sounds like a lovely sort of wintery dish to me.

And then maybe they would have a meat as a second course.

rather than putting everything all together in one dish.

You know, they have a lovely way of, of that.

And I was surprised about that dish too.

And, and we all love it.

My daughters have loved it.

It's, you know, it's not just a dish that you need to acquire.

You end your book with a few things you're obsessed with.

And Mark and I end the podcast with.

Things that make us happy in food this week.

So tell me what are you obsessed with?

That's making you happy in food this week.

Well as I happen to be in greece It's the it's the greek flavors at

the moment that i'm obsessed with so there's like there's the little sugar

dusted biscuits Which i'm going to go out and look on the road over here.

They sell corn on the grill There is souvlaki, which I always love and always

look for the beautiful lemons in greece the pistachio nuts sour cherry preserves.

Sour cherries is a big obsession of mine.

You can find it everywhere in Greece.

This is a little sour cherry preserves and they have, they like

to serve those to a guest, even one on a plate with a glass of water.

I love noticing the little details the way that people actually serve.

Greece is very open and sharing and wonderful and

also always full of surprise.

Tessa Kiros, your love of food and love of life and travel comes

through in every recipe of your book.

Your new book is out and called Now and Then, a collection of recipes for always.

Great.

Good luck with the book and thank you for sharing some of your thoughts

about food and travel with me today.

Thank you for this wonderful conversation.

I think I want to have lived her life.

She has kind of a charmed life.

She grew up all over the world.

She's gotten to do everything she's wanted with food.

She got to be creative.

Her kids have grown up in an environment that, man, so many

kids would want to grow up in.

I

know.

It's crazy.

We, uh, Bruce and I, uh, got to go to Madrid earlier in the, well, late in

2023, but earlier in this time span.

So a couple months ago.

We got to go to Madrid and we walked around Madrid thinking,

Oh my gosh, we should live here.

We do this everywhere.

We go to Amsterdam and think, Oh gosh, we could, we should live here.

Anyway, apparently she did it.

She had to go anywhere she wanted and said, Oh, I got to live there.

And she creates beautiful food.

I mean, a lot of books come out about people's travels and their life with food,

but there's something about her recipes that are so genuine and her, the way she.

Just treats eating is so wonderful that I, I had to speak with her because I

just am impressed with the way she cooks

before we get to the last segment of this podcast.

What's making is happening in food this week.

I just want to remind you that Bruce is also a knitter.

He sells patterns on Ravelry.

If you're a knitter, you know what that is.

He sells them on his Transcribed by https: otter.

ai own website, which you can find there.

And he's got a couple of books out, one including Knits Men Want, a way that

you can actually make sweaters that people will wear or that the men in

your life, I should say, would wear.

I have a ton of sweaters from that book.

You're wearing one right now.

I'm wearing one right at this second as we're recording this podcast.

So you might want to check out.

Bruce's knitting work, which is his side hustle alongside all of

this cookbook and food career.

Let's go on to what's making us happy in food this week.

It is pastrami, and I have always, I have always loved pastrami.

I mean, when I was a kid, we would go to deli masters in Flushing

on Horace Harding Boulevard, and it was always the same thing.

I would get a pastrami sandwich on rye.

Grossed everyone out because I didn't use mustard.

I dipped ketchup.

No!

Each bite was dippin ketchup.

Oh my god, you Have we talked about this on this podcast?

My mother, uh, when I was a kid, if you put ketchup on a hamburger,

my mother's response was, I raised you better than that.

Well, I didn't like mustard as a kid, but here's the thing.

So, it's recently been New Year's Eve.

If you've, if you're listening to this when this first goes

up, it's just a week ago.

If you're listening later, well, it was more than that.

And I decided to make a big Jewish buffet food extravaganza for

friends, which included a pastrami.

Now, I used to have a shortcut trick for pastrami.

I would buy a corned beef in the supermarket, and I would coat it

in pastrami slices, I would coat it in pastrami spices and smoke it.

This time I got a fresh brisket from a local farm, I put it in a

brine for seven days to make my own pickled brisket or corned beef, then

I coated it in mustard and coriander and pepper, then I smoked it, then

I steamed it, and boy, was it good.

Wow, it was amazing.

And we did eat it with mustard.

I even ate it with mustard, until the leftovers, and then I went to ketchup.

Oh, no, no, no.

I grew up in Dallas, and we always went for pastrami sandwiches to But I have to

say that, uh, we never called it pastrami.

We always called it hot pastrami.

Like it was one word, hot pastrami, hot pastrami sandwiches.

And I didn't, I didn't even know the procedure thing is called pastrami because

we ordered hot pastrami sandwiches.

Anyway, it was some kind of exotic variety of pastrami, hot pastrami.

But okay.

What's making me happy in food this week is also something

that happened at New Year's.

Dinner and that was a vegan Bake well tart from Philip

Cory's book, A New Way to Bake.

If you are a listener to this podcast, you have heard Philip Cory on this podcast.

He's the head pastry chef for Herod's in London.

He has a book out called A New Way to Bake, and just to say, this book

includes a QR code for every single recipe in it in which you can launch

out to a video, and he is then making that recipe in the video.

Based on that QR code for each one.

Well, anyway, this is a vegan Bakewell tart.

It had an olive oil cookie crust and raspberry jam,

and then a vegan frangipane.

Cream.

It was really amazing.

I ate my whole piece even after pastrami.

It was delicious.

I loved it.

Even after your hot pastrami.

Even after my hot pastrami.

I even asked Bruce to make it again.

It was a really amazing vegan dessert.

I know vegan after all that knish and tong and pastrami and chopped liver.

All that stuff we had.

Gosh, uh, gout is running high in our family this week.

So that's our podcast about what's making us happy in food this week.

We are thrilled that you're along for the ride.

Thanks for being with us.

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And we'll see you here for another episode of Cooking with Bruce and Mark.