Chris Morocco: To me, that is like my favorite kind of simple cooking where you've been able to do a little bit of work on the front end, and then you remember that you have something that's ready to go whenever you want it.

Amanda Shapiro: Hi, Healthyish friends and welcome to the _Healthyish_ podcast, where we explore food and wellness in all their delicious complexity. I'm Amanda Shapiro, the editorial director at _Bon Appétit _and the founding editor of _Healthyish_. Today, we're talking about summer cooking and this summer feels really special. I know it sounds cheesy, but after the year and change we've had, we finally have things to do, people to see places to be. Here at BA we're calling it the "summer of making up for lost time." And we don't actually mean spending a lot of time in the kitchen. To celebrate the summer of making up for lost time, we developed simple summer recipes that are designed to cut back on your kitchen time so you can lean all the way into your fun time. And today we're going to talk about some of those recipes with two of my favorite people on earth. One, our honorable test kitchen director, Chris Morocco, who I'd estimate has had about three pour overs by the time we're recording this in the late afternoon. And contributing editor to BA, Amiel Stanek, who worked on this summer recipe lineup for our June/ July issue, and even developed a few of the recipes in it. Hey guys, thank you for hopping in on the _Healthyish_ podcast. 

Amiel Stanek: Hi! 

Chris Morocco: Thank you so much, Amanda.

Amanda Shapiro: It's great to talk to you both. It feels, uh, it feels so normal, which is the thing I've been saying a lot recently with great enthusiasm. 

Amiel Stanek: Well, it feels normal, but somehow we're still on a zoom in like a million different places. Uh, so yeah.

Chris Morocco: But a very intimate zoom, a very, very intimate zoom there's something special about having proper headphones on. I'm really in the moment here with you guys. 

Amanda Shapiro: Okay. Let's get ready. Tell me what cooking looks like right now in both of your houses. Be honest. Don't give me like the _Bon Appétit _editor answer. 

Chris Morocco: Um, what do you want to go first, Amiel? 

Amiel Stanek: No, you go for it. 

Chris Morocco: Well, Amanda, first of all, you are not alone. I'm so sick of cooking. It's like actually a little bit awkward to have the job that I have and be as sick of cooking as I am. Like, I'm, I'm in a, I'm in a deep funk, like a funky, deep cooking crisis. And, and this issue was partly born of the fact that it was kind of like, "Oh, summer 2021, like kind of almost normal? Maybe? You know, hopefully question mark" and how simple can we make the food that we want to eat. And how can we get ourselves to eat as well as we want to, but spend less time in the kitchen. That was our way in here. You know, we just wanted to, not necessarily not eat well, but we just wanted to put in a lot less effort to do it. 

Amanda Shapiro: That's a great sales pitch, Chris, but you didn't actually answer the question, which is what are you currently cooking in your house right now?

Chris Morocco: Oh, gosh. I mean, currently. Ah, I don't even know. I'm trying to get my grill connected still. It's still, haven't found the right gas hose, Amanda, I'm- you better-

Amanda Shapiro: So you're not eating. 

Chris Morocco: Basically. No. Um, this is the thing, like nobody in my family will eat the same thing and listen, "oh, believe me before you have kids. Oh, but my kids are going to..." Trust me my kids are going to eat what I eat. You know, no kids meal, like over at this table. Trust me, they would rather starve, okay? Then take a bite of my pasta that has green stuff in it. Okay. 

Amanda Shapiro: This sounds really dire. 

Chris Morocco: Yeah. So, um, but anyway, there are a few things where we can find, uh, shared ground, like pasta sauce on, sauce off. Meatballs generally speaking, our safe territory. We love chicken curry. 

Amanda Shapiro: Got it. It sounds, sounds super simple. How about you, Amiel? 

Amiel Stanek: So my wife is the chef at a restaurant and for the last year, like our pod has been like me, my wife, Lauren, and her business partner, Anna, who is the general manager of the restaurant, who also, we refer to as my wife's wife. 

Amanda Shapiro: Please shout out the restaurant.

Amiel Stanek: Oh, yeah. Kitty's, Kitty's Market in Hudson, New York, come through. Yeah. So I've been kind of like the one who's been cooking for a lot of the last little bit, like since they opened the restaurant in September. And they close at seven, so they're not home until eight. So it's like, we're always eating really late. And then I'm kind of the one who's sitting at home with our dog waiting for everybody to get home. I'm also like I'm terrible at grocery shopping. So most of what we eat is different remix things that I can steal from the walk-in at the restaurant. There are certain vegetables that I know that we'll always have. We have this amazing place called Applestone in Hudson, which is a groovy pastured meat, but all sold through a vending machine. 

Amanda Shapiro: The meat vending machine

Amiel Stanek: Yeah, the meat vending machine. It's great. I think like the most fragile time for me, especially cause we were upstate and it was just so brutally cold, was like February, that was when we were doing the most freezer section. It was like, I bought this enormous bag of fish sticks that roll up- 

Amanda Shapiro: Oh my god. 

Chris Morocco: Fish sticks? 

Amiel Stanek: Yeah. Fish sticks. Yeah, I got really into frying. That was like the thing that I was doing a lot. We just had like a pot of oil on the stove. And once you, once you have the pot of oil you're like, "well, I don't want to dump this out-"

Amanda Shapiro: "What else can I put in here?"

Amiel Stanek: "So i'm going to use it a couple of times. So it's like you would have a week that had three meals that featured fried foods. Then I would just be at the grocery store and be like, "oh, we got the oil. I'm going to get the frozen French fries. And we're just going to fry. We're making steak frites." like-

Amanda Shapiro: You start to look at every ingredient through the lens of like, will it go in my pot of oil. 

Amiel Stanek: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And a lot will. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. Well, let's leave that for the, for the not _Healthyish _podcast. 

Okay. Let's get back on track. When you were both thinking of this recipe package about simple summer cooking, what was the definition of simple for you?

Amiel Stanek: Well, I mean, I think that's the thing is it does mean something really different to everybody. And so some of the recipes are truly five or six ingredients and that feels like, for a certain kind of person, that is simple. You know, and for another person it's like, they want to do as little prep or as little actual cooking as possible, or use as few pans as possible. So I feel like we were trying to get that spread. For some people who stock a lot of spices in their pantry a recipe like the chicken seekh kebabs, would be a really simple one. Cause it's just, you've got all those spices ready to go. 

Amanda Shapiro: Right. And then for those of us who just want a drink, there's, you know, your DIY sour mix. 

Amiel Stanek: I mean, you know, it's, I feel like that is really the thing about cocktails. It's like everybody wants one, but nobody wants to make one. And doing a little bit of work on the front end, basically just mixing citrus and some sugar in the right proportion so that all you have to do is mix that with tequila to get a margarita, or whiskey to get a whiskey ,sour or white rum to make a classic daiquiri. To me, that is like my favorite kind of simple cooking, where you've been able to do a little bit of work on the front end. And then you remember that you have something that's ready to go whenever you want it. 

Amanda Shapiro: Just add alochol. 

Amiel Stanek: Just that alcohol. Or, you know, you could, you know, this is _Healthyish,_ you can put some in a tall glass with ice and top it with seltzer and it would be delicious. 

Chris Morocco: Just add kombucha.

Amanda Shapiro: Okay. Let's go back to the chicken seekh kebabs that you mentioned Amiel. Chris, I know you cooked through this dish. Tell us all about. 

Chris Morocco: This was a really cool one from Chintan Pandya of Adda and other restaurants in New York. And he had this like wonderful recollection of eating these kebabs, which use a base of ground chicken. He kind of does his own ground chicken at the restaurant where he uses the food processor to kind of really quickly sort of grind chicken. But anyway, you can use anything from the grocery store or even ground turkey. Other meats would be totally fair game as well. And it's so many spices. I mean, there's like garam masala. There was black caraway, there was even like a little bit of cheese in there that traditionally would be amul cheese, but that he used cheddar as a substitute, which was just revelatory because ground chicken can tend to be a little bit lacking in the same fat that other ground meats can have. So it's kind of just boring.

Amanda Shapiro: Boring, you're trying to say boring. 

Chris Morocco: Uh no. Your words, not mine. 

Amiel Stanek: Don't slander ground chicken around here. 

Amanda Shapiro: Look, there's a time and a place for ground chicken. I had some great chicken larb last night from this Thai takeout place in Ridgewood, and I was like, "damn, there's definitely a time and a place for ground chicken," but you really have to sell me on it.

Chris Morocco: Well, I think you can't just add a modest amount of anything to it and expect it to become a full on delicious, and like, this is not one of those recipes. There is garlic, ginger, there is cilantro, there is mint. He even brushes the finished kebabs with melted butter. Again, just bring that savory richness right back. And it's not out of balance, they're not over the top, but they're just full on flavorful. And so anyway, you take this mixture, you just combine everything. To your point Amiel, you know, I think simplicity is really in the eye of the beholder, right? And this package for us, actually represents something that I don't know that we've ever done before. Where we put a 30 minute time restriction on every recipe in this package. And, you know, I think having the clock ticking in terms of making all of your choices count, really makes you be incredibly honest with yourself about what is achievable in that timeframe. You know? So whether to Amiels point, you rely on your pantry to bring a lot of flavor and a lot of kind of dynamic elements, or whether you just like use that time period, to try to develop as much flavor as possible, as quickly as possible in the cooking process. You know, there's a lot of different ways to go, but like I said, the clock is ticking. 

Amanda Shapiro: I'm just imagining you guys in the test kitchen. Although I know a lot of this was tested from home. I'm just imagining like the game show style like you start the timer and then you're like, "go, go, go. It has to be under 30 minutes." How strict, like, how strict were you when you were testing these recipes to make sure that they fit under that limit? 

Chris Morocco: We were very strict, but in a way that, you know, I think there's a reason we haven't done this before. For us, it's hard to, I don't know, at _Bon Appétit_, we have a hard time really like imposing limitations of that sort on ourselves. 

Amanda Shapiro: Oh, do we? Oh, do we, Chris? Let's move along to a recipe that stars, what I think of as like one of the most iconic summer items of produce, which are tomatoes. And I th- I feel like every year we're like, what are we going to do with tomatoes that's going to feel like not just another tomato salad. And I haven't tried this particular dish, but it sounds so good to me. I cannot wait to make it, it sounds so flavorful. And it's the Vietnamese tomato salad by Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns from the New York pop-up Ha's Đặc Biệ. Amiel, I know you worked in this recipe with Anthony and Sadie Mae, tell us a little bit about it. 

Amiel Stanek: Yeah. When I was talking with Anthony and Sadie Mae was that this is a recipe that is on the menu of their pop-up kind of perennially. It's, it's no matter the season, some version of this salad is on the menu. Even when we were testing it, I was testing it at home in I think, February or March, with like fully out of season tomatoes. You know, the best that the grocery store had to offer. Which was still fairly bleak, but that dressing is just so... it's basically just a nuoc cham. So it's lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, and like a splash of water. So it's kind of an undeleted nuoc cham, but it's just so bracing and tart and salty and sweet. And you know, when I think about tomatoes and what makes them delicious, it is that kind of beautiful, balanced, acidity and savoriness and sweetness. And so even with a kind of mediocre grocery store tomato, the salad was just so flavorful and delicious. And there are tons of herbs in it, so it really has this really nice freshness to it. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. I think a lot of these recipes, we always like to tell readers and home cooks to work with what you have. Don't be afraid to make adjustments, adaptations. This particular tomato recipe also calls for some bell pepper and some tender herbs and some fennel and some cucumber. Peanuts, yeah, there's like a lot going on in here. So talk a little bit about some of the other ingredients and how they play off of the tomatoes and how people can kind of swap around if they so choose.

Chris Morocco: That's the thing that I really was struck by with this recipe is just all that it's doing texturally. There's a little bit of raw pepper. There's like peanuts and fried shallots, which like as a store bought ingredient, just like a one-stop shop for adding kind of oomph and texture and crunchiness, is just kind of unrivaled. And having like that, nuoc cham be relatively undiluted when it goes sort of onto the tomatoes, is also so like quietly genius. Just because the tomatoes are obviously gonna start to water out the moment they're in contact with the dressing, and then all the flavors will kind of equilibrilize... that's not a word. Are going to stabilize and reach some sort of equilibrium as they kind of sit in those juices, kind of marry and mingle. 

Amiel Stanek: I think that the beauty of this recipe too, it's really about that dressing, which I think the thing that's amazing about that is you could double, triple that dressing and use it all week. You could dilute it some and use that as a dipping sauce for summer rolls, or even for kind of cru de te or something like that. You could keep it at that kind of full strength and pour it over some grilled fish, as soon as it came off the grill. You know, when I think about simple cooking, it's about having that kind of flexibility and being able to set yourself up potentially so that you're cooking once and to make a salad in under a half an hour. And not only that, but to have a dressing that you can use 2, 3, 4 times, to me, that that feels extremely simple. 

Amanda Shapiro: After the break, we're going to move into the main course of our episode with a recipe from a really exciting pop-up chef. And Amiel, Chris and I will attempt to settle the great dip debate.

Okay. So we've covered our DIY classy sour cocktail, a little kebab appetizer, a punchy Vietnamese tomato salad, and now let's move on to the main dish, which is a deeply savory dip called Tuk Trey Peng Pah. It's served with pork chops and it comes from Chariya Un’s New York-based pop-up, Kreung Cambodia. Amiel, you met Char's parents and tried the original version of this dish I heard. 

Amiel Stanek: Yeah. Yeah. So I, um, last summer took a road trip with Char to her family's home in South Carolina, and her mom is the most unbelievable cook I've ever met. I mean, they have her and Char's dad have like incredible garden in their backyard. They're growing lemon grass. They're growing ginger, all kinds of Cambodian herbs that are just harder to find in South Carolina. So we drove, like, I think it was like 14 hours to get there and spent 24 hours there and then drove back. But, you know, and it was all food the entire time that we were there, and Char has a, pop-up called Kreung Cambodia. And a lot of it is her kind of cooking with her mom, learning about these traditional dishes, and then coming back to New York or, you know, sometimes in different places, and cooking them for customers and for friends. And so it feels like a really incredible inter-generational transference of knowledge and culture. And the morning that we were leaving, Char's mom was on the porch, I was sleeping like right next to the porch, and I just hear like something sizzling in a pan. And I like, I'm just smelling plumes of fish sauce, kind of wafting and chilies and kind of chard shallots, you know, this is at like 7:30 in the morning and I kind of wake up and go out and her mom is just smiling. 

Amanda Shapiro: "Where am I?"

Amiel Stanek: Yeah. And so she was doing it outside in the recipe that we have in the magazine, all the vegetables, you just kind of put on a sheet pan and then broiled. Just to char them and take a little bit of the edge off and kind of build a little bit of that complexity. And then all of those things just get chucked into a food processor. And that was the thing that Char talked about a lot when we were talking about this recipe is, sometimes it can just be kind of mortared together and be a little bit chunkier or looser. And sometimes it can be blended and like fully emulsified, but then it gets hit with a lot of lime juice, a lot of fish sauce and a lot of cilantro. So it's, it's kind of has like a little bit of everything. It's spicy, it's super aromatic and just really, really bright. And, you know, works really beautifully as a dip for all kinds of protein. In this case, we're pairing it with pork chops, just to kind of like make it a full meal, but it would be delicious with steak, with chicken. Char had a funny story that she was telling me about how her family would go to this all, you can eat seafood buffet, and they would smuggle in the sauce so that they could have that at the table to dip crab legs into, to dip shrimp into. So it's really another one of those things, it's a really nice kind of all purpose condiment that you can make.

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, it seems super versatile when you want, you could use it as, you know, the centerpiece of a appetizer platter, or you could use it as a topping for your mains or it's like your dinner dip. 

Amiel Stanek: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You got to have sauce, all the sauce. 

Amanda Shapiro: Always a sauce, yeah. So let's just settle a quick food debate. Can kind of dip be a full meal?

Amiel Stanek: Absolutely. 

Chris Morocco: What are you dipping? Hold on, hold on, Amiel. 

Amiel Stanek: What are you talking about? 

Chris Morocco: Slow down get all the facts. Get all the facts before for you weigh in, man. 

Amanda Shapiro: No question. You can't ask any questions, Chris? Just a yes or no. 

Chris Morocco: No. Are you kidding? Put like a bunch of dip out on the table and see what happens in my house. Are you crazy?

Amanda Shapiro: I don't know. I feel like your kids might be pretty into it depending on the, depending on the dip. 

Amiel Stanek: I'm really surprised to hear that Chris, cause to me that sounds like dip for dinner. Sounds like it would be like the perfect thing for your family where nobody, nobody can agree on anything. It's like- 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah your kids can get the fish sticks and you can have like the porkchops. 

Amiel Stanek: Yeah, exactly. 

Amanda Shapiro: Everyone dips. I'm pitching, I'm pitching this for our next issue. 

Okay. So I want to wrap up with something simple and sweet. It's also a dip, so let's keep our cool guys. It is the Stracciatella fruit dip recipe, and I love the alternate name in the recipe description, which is grown-up Dunkaroos. Seems like the perfect way to describe it. Amiel, why don't you kick us off talking about this one. 

Amiel Stanek: Oh, yeah. So this recipe is near and dear to my heart. It was developed by my lovely wife, Lauren. And I mean, it is basically just that, it's basically adult Dunkaroos. It's like a little bit of whipped cream, a little bit of sour cream, a little bit of sugar, not a ton, and kind of roughly chopped flakes of dark chocolate. Sometimes like a little bit like a little bit of booze, but I think it's optional. Some amaro or some rum or something like that. And it comes together really quickly, but you have this like delicious kind of creamy dip that you can use for berries, for sliced stone fruit. I like to think of it as like an after-dinner cru de te. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. But I do think sweet dips are kind of divisive. Like dessert, hummus. Do you remember how that kind of became a thing? 

Amiel Stanek: Yes. And no, that- do not.... 

Amanda Shapiro: Sorry to bring that in here.

Amiel Stanek: We have to cut that we cannot, we cannot talk about dessert hummus and the Stracciatella dip in the same- 

Chris Morocco: I missed this entirely.

Amanda Shapiro: Chris, you're better for it. Oh, I'm sorry. I brought that into the room. This is nothing like dessert hummus. And also if you like dessert hummus, no, no shame in that game, but this- 

Amiel Stanek: I'll shame you, I'll shame you. Amanda, Amanda can't because, uh, for, for certain reasons. 

Chris Morocco: Contractually forbidden. 

Amanda Shapiro: All right, fine. That's fine. 

Chris Morocco: But the important thing to keep in mind though, is fast desserts is not necessarily obvious. I mean, aside from, you know, ice cream, opening up a package of cookies, what have you. Simple homemade desserts are really tricky to get the right balance. You know, like we were looking at like, "oh, well, could we do a sundae? Should we do a hot fudge sundae?" You start looking at hot fudge recipes. And it's like, "oh, you got to wait with the frying thermometer and it's got to go to what temperature?" And you're just like, no, that is not simple. Anything involving like a thermometer, you know, other than maybe a meat thermometer, it's just a click too far. 

Amiel Stanek: I mean, I think that that's the thing is like people talk about simple fruit desserts all the time and that's such a summer thing, but it's like, if you're turning your oven, if you are taking out an appliance, if you are really using like more than one bowl, it stopped being simple 20 minutes ago. And it's also hot. You know, the weather is getting warmer. I don't really want to turn my oven on. All of that feels like a little bit much, so kind of like a raw summer dessert feels like something that's very welcome. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. And also one where people can like pick their own portion size. I think there's nothing more embarrassing than when you have a big meal and like you're kind of too full] for dessert. And then someone just gives you a plate of like a piece of pie and you're like, "oh God, I'm not sure if I can finish this." And then you finish it and you're too full. This sort of buffet-style dessert where it's, here's your big bowl of dip, and like here's a bunch of fruit and kind of go for, feels kind of low key and like perfect for the summer dinner parties we like to have. 

Amiel Stanek: For sure. I mean, I will also say that after this year, mercifully, I feel like I'm vaccinated, Lauren's vaccinated. Most of our friends are vaccinated. And so there's something that feels really exciting about being able to eat off of the same plate. In the way that we were kind of having summer hangs last year, where it's like we're 10 feet away from each other and you have a bowl of chips, and we have a bowl of chips and we were making like two times everything.

Amanda Shapiro: Like the saddest potluck, where everyone just has to bring their own meal.

So I just want to point out that by the time our listeners have finished listening to this episode, uh, you could have executed any one of the recipes in this simple summer cooking playbook. How many of how many recipes are there? Pop quiz? 

Chris Morocco: 22? 23? I lost track. 

Amiel Stanek: That sounds about right. It's all a blur. 

Amanda Shapiro: Any one of those 23 recipes done in the time it takes you to listen to the _Healthyish_ podcast.

Amiel Stanek: You should have told people that at the beginning of the episode. 

Amanda Shapiro: Well that's what editing is done for, Amiel. 

Amiel Stanek: Oh yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that.

Amanda Shapiro: But we're actually going to keep it at the end. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the _Healthyish_ podcast. If you were appetized by the audio, I highly recommend trying out some of the recipes in this year's Short is Sweet and Savory package. All the recipes are available on print and digital, the link to that is in our show description. Thank you to our guests Chris Morocco and Amiel Stanek for joining the show today. You can follow Chris on Instagram @moroccochris and watch all of his highly addictive test kitchen series on the _Bon Appétit_ YouTube channel. And you can find Amiel on his Instagram @b_goutish. You'll have to ask him what that means. 

And if you love the show, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us keep putting out the good vibes. For the recipes and stories mentioned in the episode, you can follow _Healthyish_ on all the social platforms @healthy_ish, or just visit our website for more.

The _Healthyish_ podcast is produced by _Bon Appétit_ in partnership with Pod People. Vishnu Vallbhaneni is our senior producer and Morgane Fouse is our associate producer. This episode was engineered by Trae Budde and our theme song is by Particle House. A huge thank you to the Pod People production team of Matt Sav and Madison Lusby. From _Bon Appétit_, June Kim and myself provided editorial direction for the episode. Special thanks to Julie Shen, Ginny Bloom, and Nico Steele. I'm your host, Amanda Shapiro. I'll see you next week.