The Splendid Table

Listen on:  Apple Podcasts | Stitcher |  Google Podcasts  | Spotify |  Pandora Our Splendid Table Selects podcast spotlights conversations that inspire us to cook in creative ways. Mandy Aftel is an artisan perfumer with a deep knowledge of natural essential oils. Her book  Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent , co-authored by chef Daniel Patterson, features scent-crafting skills and perfume ingredi...

Bon Appetit’s Editor-in-Chief Adam Rapoport joins us with a rather intense take on sandwich making, our Dinner Party Download pals Brendan Francis Newnam and Rico Gagliano help us throw a dinner party, Anya Von Bremzen talks to Melissa Clark about the home restaurants of Cuba, America’s Test Kitchen teaches us how to make a veggie broth concentrate, and Doc Willoughby on country-style pork ribs. F...

How important are sauces in the world of food? In French kitchens, the most respected cook is the saucier – the person who makes the sauces. You can’t have tacos without salsa. And, Beyoncé keeps hot sauce in her bag. So, obviously, sauces are essential. But what is a sauce? And how did we start making them? Maryann Tebben is a food historian, the head of the Center for Food Studies at Bard Colleg...

This is a show about restaurants, but not necessarily about the chef. It's about the lives of kitchen workers, their triumphs and troubles, and the extended family they often find on the line. We talk to Amy Thielen, author of Give a Girl a Knife, about what life was like for her working in some of the great kitchens in NYC. In 'Chefs With Issues,' Kat Kinsman offers a place for kitchen and servic...

Welcome to Splendid Table Selects, our podcast on the stuff that makes us better cooks and eaters. It's January. It’s cold. It’s dark. You may find yourself fighting off a case of the sniffles, along with those eight pounds you gained over the holidays. Do not despair. We’ve got something to make your cold winter world a little more colorful – and it’s soup.  But, not just ordinary soup; we’re tal...

We're going back in time, to the 1970’s and the beginning of the American restaurant revolution.  It was a time when young, talented chefs started opening restaurants that didn’t feel bound to tradition. It was when cooking first became cool, and writer Andrew Friedman says the energy at that time was palpable. Friedman runs a website about chefs called Toqueland  and wrote the book  Chefs, Drugs,...

No matter what you celebrate – or where – one thing we all have in common this time of year is that we gather with family and friends to celebrate the season. And food is central to those celebrations. It’s in that spirit that we turned to Jack Bishop, the Chief Creative Officer at America’s Test Kitchen and part of the team behind the new travel and food book Tasting Italy: A Culinary Journey , t...

Host Francis Lam talks to chef Samin Nosrat about the four elements you need to understand to make your cooking sing. She is the author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. Emily Kaiser Thelin brings us the story of legendary food writer Paula Wolfert and her struggle with memory. Thelin is the author of the new biography Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfer...

In our show’s home state of Minnesota, holiday cookie baking is a knock-down, drag-out competition thanks in part to the food section of the Star Tribune. Fifteen years ago, Rick Nelson, the paper’s restaurant writer, suggested that they have a little holiday cookie contest for readers. 3,500 recipes later, Rick and Lee Dean, the paper’s food editor, picked 150 of the very best for The Great Minne...

Francis Lam talks to chef Sean Sherman, author of The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, about the diverse elements of modern Native American cuisine in North America. Contributor Shauna Sever talks to Dorie Greenspan about the ingredient she has built her career around, butter. Tucker Shaw of Cook’s Country from America’s Test Kitchen comes to the defense of pumpkin pie spice, just in the nick of t...

Francis Lam hosts the 2018 edition of our popular Thanksgiving call-in show. Francis fields two hours of calls from listeners and is joined by guests Dorie Greenspan, Pati Jinich, Samin Nosrat and Lynne Rossetto Kasper. Looking for something specific from the show? See this page for a full rundown of questions and topics from this year's phone calls. Broadcast dates for this episode: November 22,...

We all know that the starring role of the Thanksgiving feast belongs to the turkey, but the side dishes are just as important. While traditional sides bring a classic feel to the meal, sometimes it’s refreshing to shake up your routine. With that in mind, Managing Producer Sally Swift talked with our dear friend Lynne Rossetto Kasper. Lynne always has a long list of wonderful ideas for adding new...

This week, The Splendid Table presents unique perspectives on Thanksgiving. We begin with Indian-inspired dishes for your holiday feast. Francis Lam talks with Chef Vikram Sunderam and David Hagedorn, co-authors of the best-selling Rasika: Flavors of India . Contributor Melissa Clark visits with Emma Christensen, author of Modern Cider . Christensen explains the simple steps for making your own ha...

Since the holidays are synonymous with entertaining, you may already be thinking about the wine you’ll undoubtedly need to purchase between now and the end of the year. With that in mind, we’ve called in an expert to help you choose unique wines that will impress your guests and hosts without busting your budget. Madeline Puckette is a sommelier, the author of the expansive wine guide Wine Folly:...

Francis Lam is in the kitchen with cookbook author and Top Chef judge Gail Simmons to learn about her Key 3, the three go-to dishes she just can't do without - including the perfect fried egg sandwich. Chef, writer and photographer Michael Harlan Turkell traveled the world in search for unique vinegars for his new book, Acid Trip. He talks with Shauna Sever about his experiences, and discusses the...

Welcome to Splendid Table Selects, our podcast featuring interviews we find particularly interesting or helpful. This episode, we're talking about hard cider. The alcoholic beverage made from fermented apple juice was popular with early Americans because it was easy to make and was safer to drink than water. Over the years, hard cider became less popular as people began to favor beer, wine, and sp...

Pastry chef Stella Parks, best-selling author of BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts, talks with Francis Lam about the origins of our favorite classic desserts. She shares the history of and her decadent recipe for red velvet cake. (Spoiler alert: there's red wine in it!) SAVEUR writer Leslie Pariseau takes us to India for a grand religious pilgrimage centered around a sweetened rice dish as devot...

Here's the situation. You’ve got friends coming over for beers after work. You get home, and there it is. Your beer. On the floor of the garage, not in your fridge. And you can’t find your bottle opener. Have no fear; the King of Beer Hacks is here! Ben Robinson is the author of Beer Hacks: 101 Tips, Tricks, and Projects . He shared a handful of his favorite hacks with Managing Producer Sally Swif...

In this episode of The Splendid Table, we are looking at food from faraway places with host Francis Lam. Top Chef contender chef Sheldon Simeon talks cooking the home food of Hawaii. Francis recalls a trip to the remote Faroe Islands and the efforts of chef Leif Sørensen to bring fine dining to an area known traditionally for a subsistence diet. Contributor Melissa Clark explores the rise of Briti...

Splendid Table Selects is our sister podcast that features interviews that focus on intriguing topics. This episode, we look at the science behind wine headaches. If you're a person that doesn't get wine headaches, count yourself lucky. For those that do suffer them, some of us at The Splendid Table feel your pain - literally. Dr. Nadia Berenstein is a researcher who writes about science, technolo...

This week, we devote our entire show the wonderfully multifaceted food of the Philippines. Amy Besa, author of the award-winning Memories of Philippine Kitchens tells us about the unusual mix of Spanish, Chinese, Mexican, and American influences on Filipino food. Francis Lam goes into the home kitchen of chef King Phojanakong and his mother Emma for a lesson in the delicious seafood sinigang stew....

As the end of summer draws near, we're making our final efforts to savor the flavors of the season from our gardens and farmers market. For some help we turned to Marisa McClellan, the food preservationist extraordinaire who runs the blog Food in Jars and has written three books on preserving. She talked with our contributor Shauna Sever about some simple ways to take last days of summer produce a...

Francis Lam talks to Caleb Harper, Director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at MIT Media Lab who believes that to feed the world, we need to fully embrace indoor urban farming. Rachel Khong takes us around the world to explore how different cultures prepare and eat eggs. America’s Test Kitchen puts grill tongs to the test. Patrick Comiskey explains the wonderful wines and storied past of the Am...

Welcome to Splendid Table Selects, our mini-podcast where we serve up one interview that’s taught us something new, inspired us, or just made us better cooks. As we near the end of summertime, we have two things on our mind: watermelon and tomatoes. Thankfully, Vivian Howard is right there with us. Vivian is a terrific chef, author of a best-selling cookbook Deep Run Roots , and the star of the PB...

Welcome to Splendid Table Selects, our bite-sized podcast and a place where we share conversations that taught us something new, really inspired us, or just made us better cooks. Ilene Rosen has been making salads professionally for decades and recently published her first cookbook on the subject, Saladish . Rosen's theory in the book is that by bringing together a wide range of ingredients that e...