Keep Calm and Cook On with Julia Turshen

Lisa Gross, the founder of League of Kitchens, and Mab Abbasgholizadeh, one of their instructors, sit down with Julia and talk about the organization and its impact. The conversation covers a range of meaningful topics including activism, feminism, sexuality, identity, ideology, immigration, home, memory, trauma, healing, agency, cooking, and love. There are also answers to listeners' questions ab...

You might know Elle Simone Scott from the PBS cooking show America’s Test Kitchen where she is a regular on-air contributor. You might know some of her other work without even realizing it— she has created beautiful food behind the scenes as a food stylist and culinary producer for the Food Network, Cooking Channel, and Bravo. In 2013 she incorporated SheChef, a networking organization for women c...

Karen Akunowicz, named Best Chef: Northeast in 2018 by James Beard Foundation, is well-known from her stint on Bravo’s Top Chef , her time as Executive Chef at Myers + Chang in Boston, and from Myers + Chang at Home, the cookbook she co-authored with Joanne Chang. She owns and runs her new restaurant Fox & the Knife in Boston with her spouse, LJ Johnson, plus their poké shop, SloPoke. Julia sat do...

The 3rd Season of Keep Calm and Cook On kicks off with Antoni Porowski from Netflix’s Queer Eye and author of the brand new cookbook Antoni in the Kitchen . He and Julia cover everything from imposter syndrome to throwing dinner parties to how to handle being an empathetic person. One lucky listener is eligible to win a copy of Antoni’s new cookbook! To enter for a chance to win, leave a review of...

Listen to a live recording of the "Goodbye Food World, Hello City Hall" panel from the Eater Young Guns Summit with Shakirah Simley and Julia Turshen. The Summit was a day-long event put on by Eater that celebrated young talent in the restaurant industry and the issues that are important to them. The panel was a purposeful conversation with tangible ideas about all sorts of ways we can a...

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer for The New Yorker and her new book of essays, Trick Mirror , is about to come out in August. Before writing for The New Yorker , Jia worked as a deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. Jia and Julia talked about writing, real life versus online and print versus digital, how she learned to cook when she was in the Peace Corps., the role of...

Jocelyn Guest and Erika Nakamura are the butchers behind J&E SmallGoods, a newly launched quote-on-quote Mom & Mom Shop that makes mail-order hot dogs, kielbasa, and bratwurst. There are more meats are in the pipeline. They have dedicated their careers to supporting local family farms that raise animals with big space, clean water, good feed and respect. They believe you shouldn’t have to...

This episode features a conversation with Emmett Findley, the Manager of Communications at God’s Love We Deliver , and Craig Palmer, one of God’s Love We Deliver’s longtime clients. God’s Love We Deliver is based in New York City and their mission is to improve the health and well-being of men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses by alleviating hunger and ma...

Julia talks all things cookbooks with Matt Sartwell, the managing partner of Kitchen Arts & Letters, a bookstore in New York City that specializes in food and drink. Matt came to Kitchen Arts & Letters more than twenty years ago after a career as a book editor. Kitchen Arts & Letters is a small shop but it holds over 12,000 titles that aren’t just cookbooks— they have books on the hist...

If you’ve ever tuned into CBS This Morning: Saturday and seen a chef or cookbook author get to talk with the anchors about their career and their food on the segment known as "The Dish," producer Marci Waldman was behind what you saw on your television screen. Born and raised in New York City, Marci started working at CBS News when she was 13 years old. Her father, who very sadly passed...

On this special bonus episode, Julia shares the recording of her live interview with the cookbook author Priya Krishna in celebration of her new book Indian-ish which she coauthored with her mother, Ritu Krishna. Indian-ish is Priya’s loving tribute to her mom’s “Indian-ish” cooking—a trove of one-of-a-kind Indian-American hybrids that are easy to make, clever, practical, and packed with flavor. T...

Kelly Fields is the force behind Willa Jean, a restaurant and bakery named after her grandmother, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Kelly started cooking and baking when she was young and studied under the legendary chef Susan Spicer. She worked at a number of prestigious restaurants and traveled extensively to work with lots of different chefs before she opene...

Vallery Lomas, winner of the 3rd season of The Great American Baking Show, is not only a phenomenal baker, but is also a food writer, blogger, photographer, soon-to-be cookbook author, and former lawyer. She started backing and blogging years ago while she was in law school and while she practiced law, which she did full-time for 8 years. She was cast on the 3rd Season of the Great American Baking...

Mona Talbott and Kate Arding are the forces behind Talbott & Arding, a cheese and provisions shop, in Hudson, New York. Mona and Kate approach their food, shop, and community with intention and love. They sat down with Julia to talk about what their lives were like before they opened their business, how they navigate running it together as a couple, and more. Mona has over 25 years experience...

Cécile McLorin Salvant is a jazz vocalist who was born and raised in Miami with her French mother and Haitian father. She started classical piano studies at age 5 and began singing in a children’s choir at 8. Cecile moved to France in 2007 to study both classical voice and also law. When she was there, she began learning about and singing jazz and recorded her first album, Cécile. She soon won the...

Elazar Sontag, a cookbook author, freelance writer, and editor at Serious Eats, talks to Julia about cooking, writing, anxiety, Guy Fieri, and more. There are also answers to listeners' questions and a shoutout to The Trevor Project. Some follow-up links! For more about Elazar, head here . For more about Elazar's book* Flavors of Oakland*, head here . For Julia's recipe for Charoset Quinoa from No...

Julia speaks with writer and editor Hali Bey Ramdene about her career and the nuances of telling stories about food. Hali holds a Masters in Gastronomy from Boston University and after school she moved to Des Moines, Iowa where she was the Associate Food Editor at Better Homes and Gardens for three years. She then returned home to Albany, NY where she worked from home for The Kitchn , first as a F...

Julia kicks off the second season of Keep Calm and Cook On with Cecile Richards , who was the president of Planned Parenthood for more than a decade and who Vogue magazine has called a “heroine of the resistance.” Cecile’s late mother, the incredible Ann Richards, was the Governor of Texas and Cecile so clearly follows her mother’s meaningful footsteps doing work fighting for social justice and wo...

This episode features the first official Equity at the Table event. It is a recording of a panel conversation moderated by Klancy Miller, an EATT Advisory Board member and author of Cooking Solo . Host Julia Turshen was the author on the panel and was joined by Kara Rota , a cookbook editor, Cindy Uh, a literary agent with Thompson Literary Agency , and Heami Lee , a photographer who shoots cookbo...

On this special bonus episode of Keep Calm and Cook On, Julia shares a recording of the final event for her Now & Again book tour— a panel conversation at the Atlanta History Center with Rosalind Bentley (of the Atlanta Journal Constitution ), Kim Severson (of the New York Times ), Deborah VanTrece and Lorraine Lane (of Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours ), the cookbook author Virgina Willis ,...

Julia sits down with two of the women behind the scenes at Oxo. Becca Del Monte is a Product Engineer who works mostly on fruit and vegetable tools and Lua O’Brien is a Product Category Director for food storage. They discuss how they got into their careers, what goes into making products (literally and emotionally), and what excites them about their work. For more about Oxo: Oxo.com . For more ab...

Liz Alpern is passionate about bringing people together through food. She is the creator of Queer Soup Night . Each QSN a time to feel welcome who identify as queer to not feel like an exception in the room. There are now Queer Soup Night communities across the country. Liz is also the co-founder of The Gefilteria and co-author of The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods . Liz...

Hawa Hassan (of Basbaas , a line of Somali condiments) and Beth Linskey (formerly of Beth's Farm Kitchen ) join Julia for a conversation about friendship and mentorship and how both can transcend age, race, and place. Hawa started her company Basbaas because she wanted to shift the narrative about being Somali. In her words, “What could be a better way to do that than through food?” To get her com...

Award-winning cookbook author and former human rights campaigner Yasmin Khan sits down with Julia to talk about her new book, Zaitoun , and the logistics of a career transition, the importance of rest, the way food can be an entry point to conversation, and why we have to hold onto hope. Yasmin's first book, The Saffron Tales , includes recipes and stories from the Persian Kitchen. It’s a very per...

Ashley Christensen cares as much about people as she does about food. The Raleigh-based chef and restaurateur started cooking when she was in college and now runs an empire of restaurants in the Triangle in North Carolina including Poole’s Diner which she opened over a decade ago. She employs over 200 people and is known for not being afraid to speak up. Ashley’s cooking, restaurants, and cookbook...