Amanda Shapiro: Hi everyone, I'm Amanda Shapiro, welcome back to _Food People_, and we're doing something a little different this week. I'm really excited about it, I think you're going to like it. For this episode, we're going to go behind the scenes and we're going to see how a BA print issue goes from completely blank slate to a full lineup of stories and recipes all through the magic of meetings. A lot of meetings, but fun meetings. And we're going to actually sit in on one of those meetings. At the time of this recording, the BA staff was at the early stages of mapping out the June / July issue. And this is one of those, uh, combined issues we do a couple of them each year. We cover two months in one. So June and July for this one. And the meeting we're going to listen in on is called the all-staff pitch meeting. It happens very early. On it's when everyone on staff gets the chance to kind of sell the decision-makers on their idea. And then for the second part of this episode, we're going to talk about a recipe that actually did get greenlit for our digital platform, bonappétit.com. We're going to bring in recipe developer, Asha Loupy to talk about her most delicious popcorn chicken recipe. And not only talk about it, but hear it. She's actually going to cook it live on the show. It's perfectly time for the Super Bowl, just going to say. But first let's talk to test kitchen director, Chris Morocco. He's going to be kind of like our spirit guide on this journey. 

So Chris, before we hop into the all-staff pitch meeting, set the stage for us. What is going through your head right now about the summer issue? What concepts are kind of on the table? 

Chris Morocco: So even before we go into this sort of larger group brainstorm, my team had an internal brainstorm last week. And I just wanted to kind of encourage them to just start to think through what does this kind of June and July, well, what could it look like? You know, what did we do last year and what do we want to do differently or not this year? And this well is all about simple summer cooking and just, you know, wall-to-wall recipes, cookbook style. But the question is, how do you, do you impose an additional editorial set of hoops to that content? Do you bring any kind of like higher level organizational principle to bare?

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, I think that's really a great point. So Chris, it's a cookbook style magazine issue. Say more about what that means, like what kind of exactly is the theme for this issue? 

Chris Morocco: That's a lot of what my team discussed the other day. We talked about, do you organize the recipes by time of day? Almost as though there's like a timestamp from like morning... let's say like a little bit more involved, kind of like summery breakfasts, you know, if that's even a thing. I don't know, is that a thing. I don't know, we'd have to figure out if that's even a thing, right? And timestamp recipes that take you through the day, all the way through to the last fun snacky, sweetish dessert, you know. Or do you organize it by groups of recipes around different scenarios? You know, like the beach side hang or the weekday breakfast or any kind of other way of lumping some of the recipes together and getting at some of the different scenarios you might find yourself in summer.

Amanda Shapiro: Okay. So before we get into all of these kinds of theoretical questions and ins and outs, I want to zoom way back and just talk about the process as you and I have seen it and been a part of it from the beginning. So like how far in advance are we even having the conversation about a future issue? 

Chris Morocco: For print content, we're usually talking at least six months in advance. And we're like, kind of perfectly out of season, you know? You're basically like opposite of where your mind is editorially. You know, it's January right now, but we're talking about June. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yes. Yes we are, and we start talking about Thanksgiving in June when the June issue is out. 

Chris Morocco: And that's why it's such a luxury to be able to work a full year in advance, to be able to actually create content in the summer that will run the following summer. But for many reasons, it's very hard to do that. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. And I feel like we need to talk about why that is, because it just sounds so ridiculous.

Chris Morocco: I mean, a long form reported piece, you know, who knows how many moving parts went into it? It's not crazy to think, "Oh, this is going to be running in six months, but I'm turning it into my editor today." But when you work in food, to do the same thing means that when you're developing recipe content in January and you're working with January produce to produce recipes that are ostensibly summer recipes that capture the vibe and the feeling of summer, et cetera, it's a tough place to be, you know. 

Amanda Shapiro: I forget which story it was, but it just felt crucial that we get the shot with snow on the ground, but we're having this conversation in July. So do we have to shoot it in December and then wait a full year? Or is there some way to get to fly somewhere where there's snow in July to like get the shot?

Chris Morocco: Yup. Yup. Suddenly gourmets budgets like make sense in that light. 

Amanda Shapiro: So I know back in the day, before we all were remote, we would have these pitch meetings in person. And like there's so much lore around magazine pitch meetings and like how they can be so intimidating for new people. That feels a little bit different now.

Chris Morocco: Yeah. I feel like it used to be this sink or swim open mic night, talk for as long as the audience is paying attention kind of thing. To people who are new to the world of magazines and media brands, you know, this is like still intimidating, but to me it's as friendly as it's ever been. Everybody gets a turn. Nobody's shouting at you. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yes, you and I actually, co-hosted a pitch camp earlier in the fall to help, you know, the newer folks, but really everyone to remind people that a pitch is not, you know, rambling for two minutes. You have to have a headline in mind, a who, a what, a where, a why, and you've already done some research. Maybe you've already made some phone calls, talked to a chef. I mean, I think the same thing applies with a recipe, right? You don't have to have the recipe, you know, fully developed with quantities and all of that, but you, you know, you have to have something more than just an idea. So what do you expect people to come to you with when they pitch a recipe?

Chris Morocco: I mean, the rough expectation is that you'll be able to deliver on whatever it is that you're proposing, right. And that you'll be able to create a cohesive group of recipes around whatever story you are proposing. And at the end of the day, it's about which point of view do we want, what is most important to us? You know? 

Amanda Shapiro: Yes, I totally agree. It's about how all these recipes kind of puzzle piece themselves together in the magazine. Okay, so the time has come. We are going to hop into this June / July all staff pitch meeting. The staffers are coming prepared with their ideas for the issue, and Chris we'll check back in right after.

So you're first going to hear from Interim Deputy Editor Hilary Cadigan, who is leading these meetings, overseeing all things print. And Hilary sent out an email about a week or so in advance with some basic info about the issue. What kinds of pitches she's looking for. I sat in on this pitch meeting, I will let you know, who's speaking. I won't be speaking myself. Also a quick note on terminology. You're going to hear people referring to "the well" or "the feature well," the well is just the middle chunk of the magazine. It's usually where longer stories and longer groups of recipes live. And while the beginning and the ends of the magazine often use similar formats and columns, the well is where we really get to play around with special themes and layouts.

Okay. So here's Hilary starting things off. 

Hilary Cadigan: Alright,. so to kick this off, this is our June / July print ideas meeting. This issue as has been a recent new tradition, will be our cookbook well issue. Super simple, kind of like summer forward collection recipes in the, well. And as we mentioned in the email, we are looking for kind of themes behind this takeover. So whether it's one overarching theme, like last year every recipe was make-able in 30 minutes or less, or if there's like a cap on ingredients, or some sort of theme like lazy lunches, or if we want to do kind of multiple themes within that is very much on the table for pitching. 

Amanda Shapiro: Okay. So first up is Senior Cooking Editor, Sarah Jampel, and Sarah's got a pitch that is going to directly address what Hilary just talked about, this need for a theme for the well. 

Sarah Jampel: My idea was it called “it's not summer unless I've…”. But another idea I had would be a summer bingo sheet, so at the beginning of the feature well, we would have like a big bingo board. Each square would correspond to the recipe inside, and I think those squares could be very similar to like “it's not summer unless I've…” but like "eating my weight in tomato salad, made a sheet cake, hosted an outside party, tried a new cocktail, how to take it on the beach," whatever we could ask people to submit their own answers to the question. And then those different squares would kind of correspond to various spreads within the well. So like one spread I had would be called the big chill, which would be a spread of recipes that get better with time in the refrigerator. And then also in my dreams would get to edit some sort of summer sandwich or salad matrix, where you have different columns of dressing base, mix-ins, add ons, et cetera. And the idea is you can choose and mix and match and come up with a delicious combination that you love. I've never played Wordle. Sorry, if that's exactly what Wordle is. So we would have some finished combinations that have a BA seal of approval and then there are hundreds of combinations that you can make on your own.

Amanda Shapiro: So Sara's pitches are great because they are so tailored to the print magazine where we really have a lot of room to play with design. As opposed to on digital, where our options and our templates are a bit more limited. And just to say, Sarah is one of our most senior editors, so she really knows how to frame a pitch, something that makes sense for the magazine. Next up is Associate Editor, Zaynab Issa with another idea. 

Zaynab Issa: I thought it would be really great to organize the recipes for the well by a prompt that allows us to explore like multiple POV's. Using summer as a verb we can ask the question, "How do you summer?" And ask developers to offer recipes that speak to the way they spend their time during the summer. So it could be like, "I summer on the go I summer poolside, I summer spontaneously." 

Next up is Kate Kassin, BA's new Editorial Operations Associate, and this is actually Kate's first pitch meeting. 

Kate Kassin: I wanted to pitch a Dish Decoded. The tentative head being either “Oaxaca Meets Miami in Los Felix's tetela” or "I've been to Masa heaven and it's the tetela at Los Felix”. It's a restaurant in Miami that opened in late 2021. The tetela is this triangular blue masa pocket stuffed with the rotating vegetable focused filling that reflects seasonality. When I went with my parents in December, we had a filling of kubota squash and king trumpets, and cotija sitting on a bed of epazote salsa and topped with grilled oyster mushrooms. Actually from a local farm in Miami. The chef, Sebastian, was explaining that he leads this responsibility with the line cooks to stimulate their minds and creative senses for spring slash early summer. When the issue would be. They're thinking of introducing ingredients like favas and peas, smoked Chipolte, and Oaxacan cheese. Right now they're working with amazing chilies that are brought in directly from Mexican milpa farms. So kind of punchline tetela's here to stay up on the menu at Los Felix. It captures the light of this classic Oaxacan snack, while still celebrating the sustainable tradition of milpa farming and it's ever-changing seasonal produce. 

Amanda Shapiro: Okay, so just to explain for a second Dish Decoded is a page of the magazine where we talk about why we love a specific dish from specific restaurant. And we work with the chef to really break down what all goes into that dish. It's very visual. Usually it's a spread or a single page where you get a really close up macro shot of the food. And it's got lots of arrows pointing to all the different elements. Talking about what they are and how they're made. And so Kate's pitch is great. She follows all the rules of a good pitch. She has a headline, she has a section, and she's already talked to the chef and gotten some intel on the dish. Okay, let's hear one more Dish Decoded pitch from associate editor, Bettina Makalintal. 

Bettina Makalintal: One thing that I'd love to see in the summer issue would be like for Dish Decoded to be the stuffed whole fish at Boni's. They take the whole fish, take all the meat out of it and mince it with shrimp and then step it back into the fish and like pan fry the fish. Kind of like a giant fish sausage thing. And I think that's kind of cool cause it's like very visually appealing and it's a new take on a whole fish. We've done a lot, like roasted and grilled, but it's also kind of cool because it feels like a thing people don't necessarily want to make it home, so it's cool to see like, "Oh, a restaurant's doing this cool thing." 

Amanda Shapiro: I feel like everyone's mouth was really watering in that meeting. The chat on the zoom was just going off in support of all of these ideas. So the pitch meeting lasted about an hour, and I should mention that Arsh Raziuddin, our creative director was also there, so she could hear everyone's ideas and then weigh in and start to think about the issue from a design POV. Along with Chris, our Editor in Chief Dawn Davis, our Executive Editors, Sonia Chopra, and Arsh, they will all be involved in narrowing down the pitches and setting the final lineup. And here's Chris with more on those next steps. 

Chris Morocco: So a smaller group of editors will meet very often: Dawn, Sonia, myself, you know, various heads of departments, and we go through the ideas. Which by that point, we'll have been compiled in one master document and can be viewed at a glance. And I think a lot of it comes down to people having an emotional reaction to the content being presented. Sometimes people will be swayed by a critical mass of the staff all seeming to support an idea. Like we had wanted to do a hot pot story for years and Elyse Inamine had pitched it several times before it ultimately got greenlit for this April issue. There was a lot of staffers who are all in full throated support of seeing that recipe story take shape. So obviously, like you want to take that into account. Speaking personally, I think it's seeing the idea has been thought out. It's one thing to walk into a pitch meeting and just sort of say, "Oh, beans are cool." Remember when being suddenly got cool? 

Amanda Shapiro: Right. There's gotta be more to it than that. I feel like within food media, and even within BA, we can get really hyped on these certain ingredients and techniques. I can think of more than a few off the top of my head, but at a certain point we need to reign it in and find another way to cook salmon that's not slow roasted with citrus, just to name one example. 

Chris Morocco: It's so hard to know when you've kind of jumped the shark with an ingredient, roughly speaking. I think part of it has to do with visuals. Food media is a very visually driven kind of thing. And there's a certain point at which you have to ask yourself, have I literally seen chickpeas too many times this year. Or a perfectly burnished skin side up lovely crispy bone in skin on chicken thigh. How many times can we show that kind of thing in a given year without people feeling like, "Oh, you've kind of taken it a step far." You know, there was a moment where we were putting chickpeas in literally everything, because if you're cooking a little bit more plant-based and you want a solution that can literally do anything in any dish. Become crispy, become almost a garnish, act as like a meat substitute, a chickpea kind of does it all. And they're really good from the can. 

Amanda Shapiro: So did you like put a blanket ban on chickpeas? Like is there a sign in the test kitchen with a can of chickpeas and like a red line across it.

Chris Morocco: Reports of chickpeas death are greatly exaggerated. I think you just have to be careful like how often you play that card. And I think you have to recognize too, that part of it sometimes is just allowing yourself to see that like as people's pantries expand, their knowledge expands, I would like to think that in a certain sense, our readers are growing with us.

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, I totally agree. So just to close the loop on the June / July issue, at the smaller meeting with Dawn, Sonia, Hilary, and Chris, they decided to go with Sarah Jampel's overarching concept for the well, which is “It’s Not Summer Until…” and every recipe will answer that question or answer that prompt from a different developer's point of view. Now at the time of this recording, they hadn't yet decided whether they were going to source those recipes from freelance developers, or just use the six full-time food editors at BA. There's a lot to come, but they did decide to go with one of the two Dish Decoded pitches that you heard earlier. And you'll have to wait and pick up a June / July issue to find out which one. So I'm really excited about it. I think our readers always seem to appreciate these issues that are super straightforward, all about the recipes, tons of cooking inspiration. But Chris, I'm curious, when you see this issue out in the world in like four months, how will you kind of judge its success? 

Chris Morocco: I think it's just really hard to know what success is. I mean, sure you want people to cook your recipes, but I feel like the internet is kind of littered with examples of things that people kind of want to look at, but aren't necessarily gonna cook. And I think success for me is giving people, recipes that they actually want to cook. That become part of their weeknight repertoire or become their go-to kind of entertaining main that they feel really comfortable serving to friends. That is what success is to me, but sometimes that is something that accrues over time. You are winning people over, uh, individual at a time, recipe at a time, and I think in the era of there being such clear metrics around digital success, I think it's easy to kind of lose sight of that broader mission, which to just keep people excited to cook.

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah, I think that's a great marker, especially in a world where the internet exists and there's just so many data points and metrics to kind of lead us one way or the other. There really is this more human side to knowing if something is working. I think for me, just giving people inspiration and confidence to cook in their own kitchen has always been something that has appealed to me and given me a sense of purpose when coming up with an editing stories for the magazine, and it's been such a pleasure working on that with you in all of the ways that we've done it over the years. Thank you for hopping on the show and sharing some of that insight. 

Chris Morocco: Totally.

Amanda Shapiro: Okay. Let's take a quick break here and when we get back, we're going to talk to Recipe Developer, Asha Loupy about an incredible harissa honey popcorn chicken that you can make this weekend. For, you know, that big game or literally now, or kind of whenever you want, because it's really that good. So stick around.

We're here with Recipe Developer, Asha Loupy. Asha works for the incredible single origin spice company at Diaspora Co., which works with farmers primarily in India. They source super high quality spices. Asha, welcome to the podcast we're gonna talk about you today, hear what it was like developing this amazing popcorn chicken recipe, which is on our digital site, bonappétit.com, and then we are going to get into you cooking that popcorn chicken live on mic. I can't really imagine a better recipe to cook live on mic. Do you feel good about it? 

Asha Loupy: I mean, I think so. And then like the end point is that I have a bunch of popcorn chicken to eat. So... 

Amanda Shapiro: I know, that's what I'm jealous about.

Asha Loupy: Yeah, it's really good. I have tested it three times and I'm excited to make it again. I feel like, you know, it's a good recipe when you're like, "Oh, I'm looking forward to the fifth time making this." It's nice and definitely like kid friendly. If you use a milder harissa or one time when I was testing it, I made it for my friend and her two sons and they ate it without the sauce and justdipped it in ketchup and ranch, as kids do. And one of her sons said, "This is so good that my soul is gone."

Amanda Shapiro: Oh my God. 

Asha Loupy: I was like, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I think it's a good thing. 

Amanda Shapiro: "My soul is gone." It's kind of dark, but I like it. So we're going to talk about that incredible popcorn chicken recipe that you developed, which is perfectly time to the Super Bowl or casual thing you want to be doing this time of year. I'm not a Super Bowl watcher myself. I don't know if you are. 

Asha Loupy: I am not a Super Bowl watcher, but I go to Super Bowl parties and the food has to be good because there has to be a reason why I'm there other than watching a bunch of helmeted men run around and stop and start. So the food needs to be good. So I have like strong opinions about what should be on a game day table, but not very strong opinions about the sport itself.

Amanda Shapiro: Can I get some of those strong opinions?

Asha Loupy: So I think there definitely should be something fried, like these harissa honey popcorn chicken. Fried and saucy. But also big believer in having a dip or multiple dip situation that includes lots of vegetables, because if I'm going to be grazing to just get me through and not fill me up, and then something like cheesy, carby, maybe potatoey, potato skins, nachos, something of that nature.

Amanda Shapiro: Yes, those are such good categories. Okay. So that's the Super Bowl menu. Let's talk about you, tell us about yourself and how you got into cooking. 

Asha Loupy: So I have been cooking since I was four years old, and I learned how to cook from watching PBS cooking shows instead of cartoons. So I was watching Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, Martin Yan and instead of cartoons on Saturday morning. And then I started writing my own little cookbook when I was a kid and could write, but the recipes were like chicken mix up and banana shake yum. And then I-

Amanda Shapiro: Please say you still have those. 

Asha Loupy: I still have them, and when I'm feeling like super down, I still make chicken mix up. It's a like very hilariously simple combination of egg noodles, sour cream, butter, and shredded rotisserie chicken and salt and pepper. 

Amanda Shapiro: I mean, I would eat that. And then fast-forward, you're pitching recipes to BA, amazing. So I'm curious, how often do you pitch? Because you mentioned in a different conversation that when you do pitch, it's usually like 10 recipes at a time. 

Asha Loupy: I pitched about four times a year. One per season for digital. 

Amanda Shapiro: So you're pitching 10 recipes four times a year, like kind of every season. That's a lot. I've worked with food editors now for five years, and this part is always just still a mystery to me. I know how to come up with a story pitch, but coming up with recipe pitches feels like an entirely different process. What is it like for you when you're coming up with 10 recipe ideas? What do you think about?

Asha Loupy: I start by writing out things that I am enjoying eating in that moment, combinations that sound good to me, and so sometimes it's like, "Oh, well, I've really been enjoying harissa, and I love that harissa and preserved lemons are in so many recipes together. Like how can I do something fun with that?" 

Amanda Shapiro: So it was that flavor combo, your inspiration for coming up with this recipe.

Asha Loupy: I mean, the main inspiration is that I love eating boneless chicken wings and popcorn chicken. And I wanted to test out a recipe where you had a perfect popcorn chicken that could sit on a game day table and still be audibly, crunchy like hours later because football games are really long. And that was like... 

Amanda Shapiro: That's such a good challenge.

Asha Loupy: Yeah, and definitely went through several iterations of working through what would get me there. And so I knew that I wanted that aspect of popcorn chicken, and then I just love harissa. It's been something that I've sold when I was a grocery buyer and tasted many throughout the years, and it's just one of my favorite things to put on chicken wings.

Amanda Shapiro: And we're actually going to walk through you cooking the recipe live on, on mic, right? 

Asha Loupy: Yes. So I have the chicken marinated and we're going to dredge it and fry it and sauce it.

Amanda Shapiro: Cool. 

Asha Loupy: Alright, let's get cooking. 

Amanda Shapiro: I'm so upset. I'm not there right now. 

Asha Loupy: I've had the oil on low, so I'm just going to like, see where it's at temp wise and just get that, hot. But I can dredge the chicken while that's happening. I've never been able to master like one hand is for the dry dredge, and one hand is your wet hand. I've never been able to master that. 

Amanda Shapiro: No me... I mean, both hands, just get disgusting. 

Asha Loupy: Yeah. So I just like kind of embrace that both hands are going to get gloppy and just go with it.

Amanda Shapiro: So you're currently breading the chicken, what's your wet and what's your dry combo here? 

Asha Loupy: So the marinade slash batter is buttermilk and lemon zest, chopped preserved lemons, garlic, and corn starch and an egg. And the chicken gets cut up into popcorn chicken sized pieces, and I like using chicken thighs because like it just keeps it jucier when it's fried, but you can certainly use chicken breast if that was your preference. And then that gets put in the fridge for four hours to overnight, and then the mixture that it's then dredged in is rice flour and corn starch. So, I think that the combination of the corn starch in the marinade and batter, and then the corn starch and the rice flour helps get that really crispy exterior. I'm going to just double check the temperature of the oil. I like it to be like 350, 375 cause the heat will drop once I start frying. 

Amanda Shapiro: Alright, so you're taking the, the pieces of breaded chicken and just... 

Asha Loupy: And I'm just gently dropping them into the oil, uh, and dropping them away for me, so I'm not going to splatter any hot oil on myself.

Amanda Shapiro: And how much of the bachelor are you doing at once? 

Asha Loupy: I usually do them in three batches, just so that it's not overcrowded and then it starts boiling in oil instead of fry. And the best part about these is that they're truly delicious at room temperature. So it's not a big deal that, that first batch that you fry isn't piping hot when you sauce it. 

Amanda Shapiro: Such a good sound.

Asha Loupy: You know how they have those calming sounds, there should be like... 

Amanda Shapiro: Like a meditation app of frying. 

Asha Loupy: Yeah, just the calming sounds of frying. 

Amanda Shapiro: Oh my God. I love that. That's so good.

Asha Loupy: Yeah instead of ocean sounds, it will be food founds for _Food People_. 

Amanda Shapiro: And so what are you looking for as far as doneness? 

Asha Loupy: I think the great thing about chicken thighs is that I'm not worried that I'm going to over cook the chicken. I think I'm looking for a really nice golden crispy exterior. And then of course the chicken to be fully cooked through, but because of the pieces are small, they're about half the size of a boneless chicken wing. Alright, we're getting to a pretty nice golden color. So I think we're about a minute from pulling the first batch out. And if you're unsure of if the chicken is cooked, you can always pull a piece out and cut it in half and make sure that it's, it's done in the middle. 

Amanda Shapiro: Check the inside. 

Asha Loupy: You can sacrifice one piece of chicken and then hopefully it's done and you can have a little cook snack. 

Amanda Shapiro: Cook snack, essential. 

Asha Loupy: Yes. I mean, that's the best part about being the one who's cooking is you get to have your little cook snacks. I'm going to pull the first batch out. I have a baking rack on top of a baking sheet, and, uh, I'm going to use that to drain cause I'm trying to cut down on my paper towel usage, and I've found that it's just an easy way to drain fried foods. 

Amanda Shapiro: Yeah. It doesn't have to absorb into anything it just has to drop off. 

Asha Loupy: Exactly. 

Amanda Shapiro: And you look like you don't have to space them out very much.

Asha Loupy: No, no, you don't have to space them out too much and they're not going to get soggy, which is great. But the good thing about this popcorn chicken is that it's really, really good when you eat it out of the fridge the next day, because when I was testing this like the first test I was by myself. So I just lived off of popcorn chicken out of the fridge for a few days.

Amanda Shapiro: I mean, cold fried chicken is honestly to me, I love it just as much as hot. It's like no different if not better. 

Asha Loupy: I think that that's like a mark of a good fried chicken is that it is equally, if not better, cold the next day. 

Amanda Shapiro: A hundred percent. 

Asha Loupy: They're coming out of oil and then we can switch our gears to the sauce.

Amanda Shapiro: So talk to us about this sauce. We know there's honey and harissa, what else is going on in there? 

Asha Loupy: So the sauce is a really simple combination of a lot of butter and a little bit of honey. I was inspired by the Korean honey chicken that has gochujang and honey. So it's like butter, honey harissa, and a little bit of lemon juice to balance out, have that little bit of tang, and then salt to taste. So very simple, but you get that highly glossy saucy glaze on the outside of the chicken. 

Amanda Shapiro: Cool. Alright, well let's get into it. 

Asha Loupy: So I've melted the butter and the honey in a small sauce pan and just made sure that the honey is dissolved and that the butter is fully melted. And then I'm going to whisk it into my harissa and lemon juice mixture. So I'm just whisking everything together until it starts to emulsify. And it's like this beautiful shade of red from the harissa, which is just absolutely stunning. I feel like you bring this out to any party and it's going to get people's attention. It gets pretty thick because the butter starts to cool down a little bit once it hits that cold harissa and everything emulsifies. So like I want to be able to run my whisk through it and see the marks that the whisk has made. And I know then that it's going to cling on to that fried chicken. 

Amanda Shapiro: And are we tossing or is that kind of like too tricky with all these pieces? 

Asha Loupy: And I'm not like a masterful tosser. I use a spatula and just kind of get in there and really get the chicken into the glaze. I think that if I did try to like toss this in the air, what would happen is I would toss it too high, and then my ceiling would have harissa honey glaze on it. So you just want to keep tossing and tell every single nook and cranny in those fried chicken pieces is coated in the sauce. So I think we've gotten there. I think every nook has been fully coated here. That feels crispy. Alright, I'm going in. I'm not mad at that. That was very delicious. So at first I get that heat from the harissa that I used, I went for a, kind of a medium spicy harissa, so I get that heat upfront, the crunch, and then what you're left with is that little bit of preserved lemon and lemon zest that's in the marinade. And so, you know, weird way, cleanses your palate that little bit of citrus, and then you're ready for another popcorn chicken. 

Amanda Shapiro: Well, that was pretty much the best sales pitch I could imagine to eat popcorn chicken in the new year. Asha, thank you so much for hopping on the show today. Thank you for cooking with us. I am so excited and honored to have the world see your recipe, make your recipe on _Bon Appétit._ 

Asha Loupy: Thank you.

Amanda Shapiro: Thank you to Chris Morocco and Asha Loupy for joining me on the show today and to Sarah Jampel, Zaynab Issa, Kate Kassin, and Bettina Makalintal, as well as the entire _Bon Appétit_ staff for letting us hear your pitches for the June / July issue. Look for it on newsstands in about four months. In the meantime, check out all of our recipes online, like Asha Loupy's popcorn chicken, _Bon Appétit_ and _Epicurious_ are joining forces to bring you a great cooking tool to help you along in the kitchen. So go online and subscribe, you'll get unlimited access to more than 50,000 recipes across BA and Epi. Also give our guests a follow on Instagram. You can follow Chris Morocco @moroccochris, Asha Loupy is from head to table. Make sure to watch all of Chris's recipe videos on YouTube and up on bonappétit.com, you can find Asha's recipes there too.

_Food People_ is produced by _Bon Appétit_ in partnership with Pod People. Vishnu Vallabhaneni is our senior producer, Ginny Bloom is our showrunner, Madison Lusby is our senior production manager, and Morgane Fouse and Jessica Jones are our associate producers. This episode was engineered by Trae Budde and the music is by DJ Nu-Mark. June Kim and I provide editorial direction for this series. Special thanks to Matt Sav, Aimee Machado, Nico Steele and Catherine Monahan. I'm your host, Amanda Shapiro. 

Today's episode is actually the last episode of season one of _Food People_. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the season, we'd love it if you could help us spread the word about _Food People,_ share a favorite episode with a friend, stay up to date on all things _Bon Appétit_ until we return, and follow us on Instagram @bonappétitmag for more recipes and cooking tips.