A biography for Samin Nosrathasn’t been written yet.
“Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn to use it well, and food will taste good.”
“The apricot's fleetingly short harvest - only a few weeks long - explains the urge to save the season in a jar. But cooked fruit, no matter how expertly preserved, can never measure up to the flawlessness of its fresh counterpart.”
“What any immigrant is after is a taste of home.”
“The higher a flour's protein content, the more structure and elasticity it will lend a dough.”
“Chex mix is this wonderful crunch that you just can't get enough of.”
“There's a certain kind of dark-crusted sourdough bread I'm incapable of resisting. A sixth sense alerts me anytime I veer within a three-block radius of a bakery offering tangy country loaves with mahogany crusts. Without fail, I'll make my way inside and buy one, even if there's already half a loaf growing stale on my countertop.”
“I live by myself, so I derive a lot of joy from being with my friends and their families.”
“I love a Yorkshire pudding. It's basically pancake batter that's fried in beef fat and puffs up; it's like you can't go wrong.”
“My students regularly spend 20 hours or more in the kitchen with me. I try to teach them that even the most well-written recipe for, say, gazpacho can never take into account the ways in which a tomato that's lapped each morning and evening by coastal fog will taste completely different from one grown in a hot, inland valley.”
“People never used to look at me twice. That was my superpower: When I met someone, I could decide whether to care about them based on whether they cared about me.”
“Hello, my name is Samin, and I'm an artisanal-bread hoarder.”
“One pillar of my cooking is that salad dressing is sacred and that you always make it with the most delicious oil you can find. Usually, that means extra-virgin olive oil.”
“I always turn to Wendell Berry for inspiration on food, community, agriculture, and, well, just being a human.”
“While a pot of boiling water may not offer the char or smoke of a grill, it does give the cook an advantage when it comes to seasoning food.”
“Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance - of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you'll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.”
“Growing up, I was aware of the kids-don't-like-vegetables trope, but it didn't make much sense to me. I never had any choice; all the traditional Iranian dishes my mom cooked teemed with herbs and vegetables.”
“My mom, who left Iran in 1976, steeped us in the smells, tastes, and traditions of Persian cuisine.”
“In the wake of a failed relationship, I'm often flooded with if-onlys.”
“Things taste less salty when they're cool.”
“I'd never been religious, but I'd always obeyed my elders. My decision to become an omnivore was fraught, not because it was a religious transgression but because it was my first act of self-assertion as a young adult.”