This week is a big week for us, for me and for the team that works on my brand. We are launching a book that is very special to me and deeply personal. It's called Martha the Cookbook. It is at one hundred recipes, which is a mix of classic Martha recipes, family recipes, recipes from chefs we've known throughout the years with Martha tweaks, and recipes that have stood the test of time in my own kitchen, favorite recipes
that we also revisited and updated. It is the hundredth book, a book that I published with a big team of people and includes also my team at Clarkson Potter, some of whom have been with me for over thirty years. It also includes many editors and designers and photographers, and the team who helped me plan and create this book is here today around my dis on thirty fourth Street at our office on the fifteenth floor to talk about
the making of book number one hundred. I just want to make it clear that this is not our one hundredth cookbook. It is the number forty ninth cookbook right. Forty eight cookbooks, thirteen holiday books, eight entertaining books, eight crafts books, eight gardening books, six homekeeping books, six weddings, three decorating, one business book, and one health and logivity book.
So that is the basic library. The other day we did a show with Drew Barrymore and one guy came in who has all one hundred?
That man, wow, guy, so adorable.
And I'm very, very proud of the fact that we have reached number one hundred. So we have Lisa Wagner and Lisa, why don't you introduce yourself?
That number thirty is how long I worked for you, Martha, and I started back in nineteen eighty eight and my first book with you was the Christmas Book, and that was a very small team in your house at Turkey Hill.
Oh remember that.
And I was pregnant with my oldest son, and that was really my first introduction into you and into the way you like to create a.
Book and work on a book. I remember Chris Baker or a photographer who barely made it to the end of the book. Oh my gosh. We ran those photographers into the ground. We still do. Oh yeah, we have one. We have one sitting right here, Beta Gallagher.
This one for me, it was fun because it was I had left the company and it was fun to come back. And not only was it great to be back with the team and with you, but I would often when I went down to the basement looking for props, think who else would know where this was?
Or who else could fit in between the rest?
Why you were there, Lisa Wagon because in my basement describe the basement.
But the basement now is like a prop house with metro shelving and everything from years of collecting in the studio from East Hampton everywhere, and everything is there on those racks in a pretty organized way.
She did a masterful job, and every picture is so beautiful. I got a phone called yesterday from Charlotte Beers, who was on our board in the early days, on the board of Martha Stewart Living on the Media, and Charlotte was in charge of She was the CEO of Ogilvy Mayor, the largest advertising agency in America, and she had nine thousand employees and then under secretary stayed under Colin Powell. She sat down with the cookbook. I sent it to her last week because she's going to be interviewing me
on my book tour in Charleston. And she sat down and she said it is the most beautiful cookbook she has held in her hands, isn't that? And thank you Dana Gallagher. So, Dana, you tell us a little bit about yourself and your history with the company and me.
Martha, I met when I was a baby, before I was twenty eight.
You were twenty seven when you came to Uschleppa with us, Yes, which is really Useppa, a beautiful island the western coast of Florida. But because there are no cars on the island and only the golf carts, we had to schlep everything.
You were there.
Different, We had.
To schlev all the props and we were doing like a week long shoot down there, remember I do, And it was I.
I was one of the main schlepper.
Oh my god. So we changed the name of the island to and please forgive us Useppa a residence. It's called Uschleppa now. So you were working for Vicky Pearson.
I was one of my mentors, who is amazing, who.
I'm still in contact with. I just heard her yesterday. Shout out to Vicky. She said her avocados are ripening.
Actually I had done one story for the magazine at that time, and it was a coffee story. And it was supposed to be like a little front of the book story, and you guys made it into a well story, and I was over the moon. Vicky was a prankster, and she blacked out Martha's tooth on the cover of the magazine and put it on the coffee table in her cottage, and then everybody came over for drinks, and I was like, Vicky, what are you doing? And she was just like hilarious, and I was like, God, I
hope so. And Martha came in and immediately saw it. You laughed. You thought it was so funny.
And then my story, I have a good sense of humor.
You do, and you like a good prank.
And then I offered you the job to shoot the entire menus for entertaining book.
I get a call. Martha calls me from her, but it was when phones were like the size of a brick, and she's like I had this image in my head with Martha with like a brick calling me from here black suburban. And you asked me if I wanted to do your book, and I was like, uh yeah.
And that was such a good Oh. I love that book. I still use so many of the recipes in that book. We would do five menus a day. Remember how hard we were?
Big stories like that clam bake.
Oh yeah, that clam bake was delicious. Yes, that was Dana Gallagher who then came back and shot lots lots more for the magazine, the Order Handbook, which I love so much. And uh, that's Gelfinium story that we did up in Maine. Remember how beautiful that was. That is one of my favorite stories. It is Oh good, oh good. I love that story.
Also, we got to write on your plane and you made a lot of cocktails.
Oh my gosh. If you did so, then Sarah Carrey's not. I think it's we're going in a chronological order, because then you came next. What year did you start?
Nineteen ninety nine. I started at the company working with Martha on her television show in her Westport studio and with Lisa as well. And I did that for a pretty long time before I started working at the magazine, maybe about five.
Up up in Westport, Connecticut, when we had that fabulous studio so beautiful now an what is yeah? They turned it into an Oh don't I have a party there?
Yeah, that would be amazing.
We had such great parties there. Remember the parties. Oh yeah, like the Christmas party and oh, we had so much fun. But that was a great studio and you worked so hard with John Barrettchilli. Yeah, and we had a kitchen there. We served lunch to everyone. Remember we had a Yeah.
The curmissary was incredible. I mean we were really treated well. The food was delicious. John was in charge of the commissary for a while, and then he started working in the test kitchen with us, and we had Dave and Mark Go and Fernando I think working in the kitchen, and it was delicious lunch every day. I skipped lunch a lot because I was usually getting ready for my
next segment, but it was pretty luxurious. And then sometimes we would have cookouts in the backyard and that was always really fun parties.
And then you became the food editor for Martha's Stewart Living in nineteen ninety nine through twenty twenty two. Yeah, and just marshaled that magazine into even greater heights than it had been before. No, really, I loved all the work that you've done. You helped me so much with The Essential Guide Cooking School, which is in so many people's kitchens. I love seeing that book because it is one of my favorite books. I still use so many of the recipes in that book.
Thank you.
We worked really hard on that together.
Suzanne Rupert is editorial director of Books for Martha's Stewart brand. Her first book projects for Martha were Meatless and Living the Good Long Life is still one of my very favorite books. Living the Good Long Life is a real nice handbook for living well and aging beautifully gracefully. I say, and you worked on both those projects simultaneously. That was a lot of work.
That was twenty thirteen. Okay, yeah, so now I've worked on like this hundred, like twenty books.
Now, only twenty.
Twenty in eleven years is pretty good.
Well.
I started, I was hired to work on the book department as a managing editor, and then it turned into working on both books and magazines.
Right, yeah, your book, Your job grew and grew working on this one hundredth book, Suzanne really helped so is essentially curating all the archival photographs. We have a room full of photographs, and you worked with us so hard to create a new imagery and keeping us in order, helping me choose the hundred recipes. That was a big job. Susan gave me pages and pages of recipes to choose from, and then I had to go through it and you know, discard some, put some back. It took a while. That
took like a month to choose one hundred recipes. But I think we did a very good job. According to according to my mentor, Charlotte Beers, she every single page. She said, she kept calling people that were in her house to see this picture and that picture. She said, you have the essential roubarb recipe. And she, you know, she likes that there's odd ingredients like rubarbi is odd to a lot of people, but she said then and then she looks at something so simple as green juice.
You know. So it was really a nice choice and a nice mix of recipes in this book.
Yeah, it's a nice collection. It's very personal, you know, to you, and I think there's something for every reader.
Yeah. And last, but not least, is James Mikeowski, who always is cheery somehow. You started as an art director at Martha Stewart Living in January two thousand and eight team and you worked on how many.
Issues like forty three, forty forty.
Three issues of the magazine, and this was your very first book project with us. It was yep, and you did an amazing job. Thank you again. So we were pretty we don't you think? We were pretty organized though as we got as we got going, we had a certain number of days to shoot. We had a certain number of people that could fit in my house. We didn't want a big, big gang, so we really kept it kind of Where's Carlo is my boyfriend? Carlo? Who is? I mean? I liked if he hadn't been there, I
would have been in a really bad movie. He was he because I I got through every day. He was always there to help and that's Dana's assistant. And he was just amazing. He was such a good presence.
He's a good egg. I'm working with him next week.
Give him my love.
He'll have to hear the podcast.
Okay, please in Carlo, I'm in love with you. And this was his very first project for Martha and James. What's your favorite stuff that you did here?
It's always the food stuff. I always wanted to be on Sarah's team. She's the best.
James and I had a lot of fun because he really understands food in a way that not all our directors do. And so that love of food and doing food stories really shines through.
What happened with this donut shoot.
Oh my god, that shoot. When Sarah made so many donuts, it was like you know those like six foot speed racks of just full sheet pans. It was just like nothing but donuts.
Sarah. Sarah creates effusively, if I can use that word, because there is so much food when she's doing a story, because she knows what the perfect perfect object will be the perfect picture and that's what you do. I mean, did you find the perfect donut for that picture? I think we did.
There's a picture that the belly band.
Yeah, our biggest thing that we were looking for was for our donuts to have this perfect belly band, which is actually really hard to get and it's a little ephemeral, like you don't exactly know what it is, but it's the perfect amount.
Of generally that you know that they get that with those automated turners in the oil And we don't have.
Automated No, we didn't. My automated turner was me and Today Show and she was like frying doughnuts.
What did you turn the donuts with a chopstick.
Yeah.
I had a friend come who was a pretty donut expert person, and he taught me to turn my frying foods with a chopstick, and it's actually really great.
That's what the Japanese do. Did you use a metal chopstick or wooden? I used to, wouldn't want to have. I have the middle chopsticks. Those steels that are very fine, can turn anything. I use that my tempura.
Yeah, super long.
Get them in a picture.
I remember the onion rings. I think they're there.
Yeah, the onion rings.
Yeah, yeah, oh they're great for that ring.
That onion rings, by the way, in the book is divine and it's the recipe we've been making for years, and you changed it a little bit for the buck. By I know what you did. You added wonderflower, used wonderflower instead of regular flower from a less lighter crisper.
Oh.
I can eat a pile of those onion rings right now.
Yeah, you don't love fried food.
I don't know.
When you do fried food, it has to be very light and very crisp. And that's what you got with me.
So listeners, try the onion ring recipe. You will love it.
It's really good.
And another person missing from the table is Fossil, who has I've known since she was born. She was my husband's best friend's daughter. I was there when she was born in New York City, and she worked as a food editor at the magazine for many years and she's now a freelancer. But she came back to work on the book for the first A good part of the
first part of the book. That's our little team that's around the table, and I thought we would just go through the kinds of things we did to make the book. On page two hundred and eighty one, there is a remembering column which I entitled Martha the Author, and it is how to write a cookbook, How to create a cookbook.
It's a little essay that I wrote, probably one of the last essays I wrote for the book, right, and it talks about the very complex process of creating a book like this, and it is complicated because once you have the recipes, which takes a while, then you have to determine who your team is. Then you have to determine how you're going to shoot it, where you're going to shoot it. And there was no question in my mind that we would work at our farm, Cantato Corners
in Bedford, New York. Was there any question about that, Suzanne.
I don't think so. I mean, I think for this book, you wanted to make it very person Nolan. You wanted to make sure to bring the readers into your home, into your kitchen, and you know, make every aspect of a personal use your collections from your house. As Lisa, you know, talked about the props. You wanted to bring the food presented the way that you present the food to your friends and family, and you wanted to make
sure every all the photos were represented that way. And I think everyone did a really great job of doing that. And I think that's why you said you wanted it at your house. You were in the kitchen cooking, yes, every day, long days.
I tried very hard to be there for I approved, if I didn't cook it, I approved what it looked like after it was cooked. But it's a lot of stuff. What was the how many did we do in one day? What was the most most recipes we did in one way?
We did six to ten six recipes a day, plus additional shots and step shots.
We had beautiful light, not every day, but you made the light beautiful and the way that Dana, I mean she made the table on the floor. Most of the time everything was shot on a table on the floor, and it's just a surface. And we have marble surfaces, and we have wooden surfaces, and we have fabric surfaces that we use that looks like a table. And we have an outside kitchen at my farm as well as an inside kitchen, but most of the time we were
cooking inside, big heavy prep stuff was on outside. And then we even moved down to the pool house that had beautiful light.
I know, I love that.
I love the pictures taken in that pool house.
I was going to say, I think people would be really surprised at how and where we've set up the photos and every day looking for another spot. But I was looking back at my camera roll and I have a picture of the surface by your kitchen door on the floor blocking the door and the dogs looking in.
It's just it's just that it was on that I think it was. It might have been slice duck breasts.
It was just such a funny.
It was such a funny place to be and I don't think anyone would And.
The brown room was surprisingly a night. My brown room is our big dining room. I can seat like twenty people for dinner. And that was a surprisingly nice room. The light was very nice in there morning and afternoon.
Yeah, and you have all your plants in there.
Yeah, so beautiful in there.
There's yeah, beautiful spread in the books.
And the servery which is our which is our butler's pantry between the kitchen and a smaller dining room. That's a nice room too. The light comes from from the north and the south in that room.
I left that room.
Yeah.
We shot there a lot.
We shot a lot. And then the interspersing these great old archival pictures of me and the garden and me and my original apartment in New York City, me with my my ducks, and oh I love all those pictures. They're so beautiful. But I wanted to ask Dana, what was the hardest thing to shoot in this book? What what gave you the most trouble? Oh my gosh, every single every single dish gave her trouble. Yeah, yes it did,
Oh yes it did. She was struggling some days and I kept saying, it's just a beautiful picture, please, and but you did it, you did it. No, matter what.
Well, we were like Lisa and I would sometimes go downstairs and we would struggle to find like the right vessel. I feel like a lot of times or we wanted the right surface with the right vessel, and so we would struggle. You had a lot of things, and we were trying to like make sure we were always changing it up.
But really you did not repeat, which I'm thrilled about because we used to keep big charts with little polaroids of what we used. I did that from day one because people would, you know, get start to get lazy toward the ninety ninth recipe and certainlyybe try to sneak in something again, but never sneaking in here.
That's my superpower.
Yes, it is really great.
But you have a good memory for details.
You have amazing amazing.
What about the drinks? How hard were they to photograph?
They were actually fun.
I love that martini and guess what's happened. We have a picture of an espresso martini in the book, which is a cocktail shaker full of ice, two ounces of vodka Belvedere or Zubrowka, one ounce of coffee Liqueur, and one double shot of espresso. And I have an espresso machine in my kitchen. So the espresso was really good. You shake, shake, shake, and it makes a froth and you pour it into a gorgeous glass. This is a Venetian glass. Is that hexagonal? You know, it's octagonal octagonal glass.
And I have become addicted to espresso Martini's nice. That's my dessert. Now I don't order a dessert in a restaurant anymore. I order one of those with half the amount of vodka because then you you know, then you know, you don't feel so bad.
You heard it here, Yeah, yes.
Half the amount of vodka, and I don't and the coffee doesn't keep me up anyway, since I don't sleep, so it doesn't matter.
I think that's a great example of the way that this book worked because we did not plan on shooting an espresso martini, and the day that we were shooting the drinks, you came in and you said, I've been drinking espresso martinis. Let's make an espresso martini. And we
just did. And there's a lot of not maybe a ton of examples in the book that do that, but yeah, this is one of them where you said that and we made it and Lisa found a beautiful glass and you know, Dana found this beautiful light and it and you know, it's very contrasting with the rest of the way that the rest of the cocktails are shot because it's very dark and brown and it's gorgeous.
It should be what it should be.
You know, when it all came together in a really short amount of time and we just made it happen.
And my favorite it was something you want to had. My favorite summer drink, said of instead of Margarita's, my favorite go to drink is a Piperinia made out of a cashassa Brazilian liquor. But then the Meyer Drop that we serve at the restaurant. That is a delicious drink. That is such a good drink. And the last cosmos and the cider bourbon Kcha. We've been making a lot of those because I had really good cider this year. It's the best cider I've ever had, and I think
because the apples. It wasn't a good apple yet.
It was not a good apple, but the.
Apples were extremely sweet. Every every variety of apple that I grew was sweet. And so the Jude and her friends came up to make cider. They loved the cider and they made they made it, you know.
Actually had some of your cider and it was very very.
Good, very good, and the kids were so proud of it. But it was the apples. Julips are delicious. I made that when I went to the Kentucky Derby, and I made it down south with some friends in Charleston.
That the pomegranate drink would be great for people for all. Yeah, they made it up for your party.
The frozen pomegranate Martha delicious. Yeah, and that that is amazing. We had a book party at Jean George's new restaurant at for twenty five Park Avenue, and they did it very good. Everything I ate was delicious, amazing.
Actually I was sorry when they started passing dessert because I was like.
Not those were delicious too, that that grape pective or delicious.
Wasn't that wonderful? But not in the book.
That caviar that they were passing around on the little buttered.
Yeah, with the egg.
And that's an egg on egg because that's a that is a really weirdly cooked egg yolk in between the two little pieces of brioge with caviar on top, so it's eggs on eggs.
That's in the next book.
We have a lot of caviar, and we have a lot of eggs.
I'm sorry the caviars. Caviar has become extremely popular and extremely widely served at parties in New York and and I think you can get pretty good caviar for not the you know, the hideous prices that it once costs. I think another masterpiece, it looks like another Landish painting, is the Crept the book We Crept with crem fresh and caviar. That is a beautiful picture taken in the brown room. Glass pedestals, a shaping dish filled in with marvel.
Remember that there's some good ideas in this book for those of you who like to do decorating and table decorating. There's a lot of good ideas in this book. And everything is sparkling and the silver is polished and the napkins are ironed. We went through a phase at the magazine which I hated, and I don't know. I think it started with Lisa Wagner. Just the linen napkins taken out of the dryer.
That no, because I looked iron So that wasn't me. I thought you were going to say. Another thing that that silence like to do is show the crease in the napkin or in the tablecloth.
And I don't mind that hard please, I like it.
But I love to iron so and I I iron all my napkins.
And you're like I am. I iron all my linens on top of a cherry towel so that so that any embroidery or any any beautiful it gets pressed into the towel and you have no wrinkles whatsoever. So what else was hard to shoot?
Dan Dane?
What was maybe one of your favorite days of shooting?
It is my favorite day. I don't want to talk about what's hard.
I want to talk about, okay, what was your favorite? What was your favorite?
The Paia day with the one day Carlo wasn't there and he missed it.
He missed.
You'll have to cook it for my hat. You made that, Paie. You were in such great spirits because you invited.
The entire form, all the farm workers.
Everybody came up and you made that enormous.
No hair, no makeup, no wardrobe. Great, but the whole meson plus of all the ingredients for the pie. It's a double page spread. And if you have never made pie, listeners, please make this paea because it is the best. Made in a great big pan over a wood fire. Has to be a wood fire, and you have to get that smoke and you have to get the flames up the side of the pan. The Spanish people told me you have to have the flames licking the side of the pan to cook the rice. So everything is cooked,
and it is. It's a beautiful, beautiful recipe. And I learned that recipe from a Spanish friend probably fifty years ago.
That is an entertainment.
Yeah, no, no, it's not an entertaining No, no, it wasn't no no. We made it in Florida when we went down to in the Keys. Yeah, that's where it was is and from the magazine, Yes, it's in the magazine. But I learned that from a friend, my dentist's best friend, and she had been making that in a stovetop. It was a stovetop. Respect Then Gail Towie adopted it for her own home in New York City. She makes it every year. Yeah, she makes it every single year on
the stovetop. But then I started making it in those giant pants for you know, enough for sixty people.
It's a great entertaining because it's fun to make. It's a place to gather around and you can come there outside.
Yeah, you can't go wrong. And it follows the instructions.
And you stood in front of that grill with the smoke and cooked away and Dana got some nice candid shots of you without hair and makeup and you.
Know, beautiful, really nice, really nice, and everybody got to eat them.
Yeah, you just have plates for everybody.
That was that was a really beautiful.
Because that fine.
Oh yeah, we had to tie your sleeves back right.
And then the other day, that was really my favorite day was when you were making the paro g because that was that was sort of the days in general were very harried and frenetic because there was so much going on. But when you started making the piro gi, you were it was like almost standstill, like we all just sort of stuck what we were doing and started watching you roll out the dough and stuff the paro gi and you make.
Sure and that's the picture on the back cover. We chose that an homage to my mom, Big Martha. But the recipe it works. It is delicious and uh. And yet you know when people try to make this recipe like and you know, I've tasted other people doing this, they make they don't put enough filling in the in the dough.
But you do have to be careful. It's a fine balance. And actually that dough, which seems fussy, is actually not fussy, and you think when you put the right amount of filling in. Martha taught me how to make them on this shoot.
Actually I've bet been with her.
It seems like it's not going to fit and you have to stretch the dough over the film's stretch and it's really stretchy and nice and it's so elastic that it's kind of magical.
Really, And with Crown butter and sav we're perfect.
My, we're not perfect. I think only Martha's got into the picture.
Because it's like the twist and the push and yeah.
But you guys made a sweet one too, that's my that's my very favorite one.
Apricot or Peach.
When your mom came on the show, I remember in like nineteen ninety nine, we made Yes.
You have to sweeten the sour cream with vanilla and a little bit of sugar, and you and it is the best thing in the world. That is that's dessert.
Really it is actually love how you wrote that instruction in there too.
The book, I know every word because you have to edit every single word and talk about the essays. That's why I want to hear what my editor has to say about the essays.
So two parts of it. The headnotes, which are the introductions to the recipes Martha wrote, are extremely personal and
have a lot of stories. But also there are archival essays throughout, like about twenty twenty five archival essays in the book which really make this book special and help those Once Martha wrote those and the introductions on the head notes, we were able to pick the beautiful, charming images from Martha's personal archives, and the stories that Martha wrote are just really really special, really amazing, I think is I mean, I worked for Martha now for twelve
years and there there are still so many of the stories that were fresh and new to me. One of my favorite images from this is in the beginning of the book, where Martha's cooking in curlers in a kitchen.
That's my New York two ninety Riverside drive. Yeah, there I am.
I mean you share so many personal stories that are just I think readers.
Are really going on twenty pounds.
Oh my gosh, like is that amazing?
Yeah?
And what's nice is like even Darcy Miller, who knows photographs, she told me, she said she hasn't seen many of those pictures. And the same for me. Yeah, I kept those secrets. You did book. That's great, it is so nice.
And then once you would write your headnotes, then we could find an image that would click with that, like of course for the steak, the broiled steak. There's when Jacques and Julia were you cooked you made steak with them in nineteen ninety one, so that image isn't there.
That's so great.
That was an amazing when they.
Came a child at least, yes.
Everybody, it was such a great day to have them. You don't remember it was it and it was in sport. Yeah, yeah, they came at least once.
Aulia came at least three times.
Right, I think that's my other book that they wrote together. Yeah, but they were cooking steaks, so it connected to your steak recipe. And then so we tried to make that editorial link in there. And then of course there were all those beautiful images from your family. In the dessert chapter, there's that image of your entire family, and you talk about all the desserts that your entire family, their.
Favorite cakes, their birthday cakes. Yeah.
And then James, in terms of a design, he really made some effort in like choosing the font that made sense for this, that made it special.
He was like trying to find the perfect thing, and I discovered this one. It's called Rome and it's designed by Margot Leveck. It was part of her master's program in Paris, and it's based on nineteen sixties fashion and stuff. I thought it was the perfect match.
It is beautiful.
And then if you look at the italic am at the beginning, it looks like your signature that it was meant to be. It does so, and the faux was directly from your walls right for is your house.
He pulled us all together, we need to do oh yeah, when you came in and just like I mean, we were on point.
But like he said, graphic design is never easy, and you know, you don't want to cut out too much text. But this is all very clear and it's all on one page, which really makes me happy because that's what I want. And my favorite cake in the book is the Tipriani Classic Meringue Cake, and I'm an aficionado of Tipriani. I went to Tipriani in Venice, and then I tasted the cake there years and years and years ago and came back to New York and found it in the
restaurant here. Now they have about four restaurants in New York. But I to get the recipe, I had to do a TV segment with the baker, the female bakers, a young girl who makes like a hundred of these every day day for all the different venues. And it's a simple recipe because all it has in it is, if you want to hear the ingredients heavy cream, confection or sugar. You have egg whites, and you have sugar and let's see where that's the meringue. The cake has only unbleached flour,
six large eggs, egg yolks, and sugar. That's it for ingredients.
And then you have to buy the book to get the steps.
Yeah, I'm not going to tell you that, but it changed drastically from what I eat at the restaurant to what I make at home because of my egg yolks. I have my own chickens and the cake is bright yellow at home because the egg yolks are like orangey yellow from my own hands. And it really changes the recipe, but not for the worst. I mean, it's beautiful.
You make it beautiful.
And I made four of these cakes for Memori's birthday party, Yes four, to take you a big dinner party, and it was the hit, of course. But it slices nicely, beautiful, serves beautifully, and you never leave anything on your plate.
It's very light and airy. I do love this as an example, Martha, because it's a favorite recipe of somebody else's that you've incorporated into your repertoire. Repertoire, and I think that there are beautiful moments throughout this book, but do that, And I love how that highlights like you're always learning, you're always taking you know new, You're not going to sit in the past, and you're going to either ask other people to share their recipes.
With you, evolve.
Your own recipes, like that mint Julip when we made it for the television show. We make all of this lemons zest and we make a syrup and you're like, well, why aren't we using the lemon zest for anything? And so then we just candied the lemons zest and used it as garnish. And that was something that you just added last year to a recipe that you've been making for years.
And I loved that.
It's really exemplified in this book. There's a lot of moments like that.
And the smashed baked potato, I would that has become a famous recipe. Smashed baked potato the simplest thing on earth. I learned that recipe in Lubec, Maine, way up the potato land of Maine where they grow these beautiful potatoes. And they told me, oh, and once you run to roast it, if you don't break the fibers by smashing it, it's nothing. It's just like a hard potato. So now potato. Now you have to smash your potatoes when they come out of the oven. And it makes a world of difference.
And I talk about in the head not yeah.
And that's the most favorite first course at my restaurant in Las Vegas is this smashed potato. Heavier helps. Oh, it's a great, a great dinner. I can't I'm going to roast on this weekend because we just dug our potatoes. We have, we have many bushes. Another favorite recipe is the street corn. This street corn is a delight, and it's it's made even worse by adding these crazy crucheye it's called this. It's a oily fried fried in oil,
red chili pepper, not like white light as can be as. Yeah, it's crunchy, and they're packaged in these vacuum packed little bags. They're very expensive, but they go a long way and you just crumble them on top of things. I learned about those in a restaurant in California, in Los Angeles.
And you have a lot of pasta dishes in here.
And I love pasta. I love simple pasta. I cannot sit down to a pasta that has more than four or five or six ingredients in it, and only one. If there's shellfish, it's only one shellfish. You can't have ten shellfishes in it.
Your turkey meatball is pretty amazing because it's huge and super flavorful from this pepper around.
Which I discovered somewhere along the line, And I mean, it's just delicious with a turkey.
And we had done Martha, you did a column for the magazine. That was a burger column, and the turkey burger had the relish in it. And when you wanted to do your turkey meatballs, you took that idea and made it into the meatball. And they're giant, they're gigantic. They're eight ounces each. So you put that on top of a Plato spaghetti and it's really magnificent.
That is impressed. That's a good meal.
Yeah, you might make that tonight.
That would be good. Yeah, get the butcher brind you half a turkey bread. You can't buy it around all. Wait, so you're saying, all, wait, meat.
Maybe you can do a combination, but they had no reci They.
Get it freshly brown. Yeah, because don't buy I don't buy any ground meat in the store, sorry, supermarkets, or.
Just get out your kitchen aid meat grinder.
Yeah, and grind your own.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
So I just want to thank you so much for coming here. It's so much fun to talk about and the book is on sale November twelfth, twenty four and I just want to thank all of you for sitting down with me today and thank you again for helping me with this book. And we have to start on the next book soon. I'm trying to get Sarah Carry to do her own book. Okay, well, well.
Francis Lamb, what's going on here?
And but we have, we have, as you can hear, on a very interesting time when we're creating one of these what I call a masterpiece. Thank you very much, all of you. Thank you, thank you.