Samin Nosrat (‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’) Cooks These ‘Good Things’ at Home

**Samin Nosrat** (0:00)
What's crazy is I know I'm never gonna make another Salt Fat. Like, there's never gonna be another one, and I don't even have a lot of grief about that. Like, that was its own wonderful thing.

**Sam Fragoso** (0:09)
I just was like... It took like 19 years.

**Samin Nosrat** (0:11)
Yeah, like there's not gonna be another one. You can't manufacture that, and it's fine. I just, yeah, I don't know. Like, I just needed to hear somebody else be like, what you are is enough, and what you'll make will be enough.

**Sam Fragoso** (0:28)
This is Talk Easy, I'm Sam Fragoso, welcome to the show.
Today cook and writer, Samin Nosrat. In 2017, she published Salt Fat Acid Heat, a book that became a runaway New York Times bestseller, earned the James Beard Award for best general cookbook, and ultimately went on to inspire the Emmy nominated Netflix series of the same name. If you've seen the show, read the book, or even heard her podcast Home Cooking, what's immediately striking is Samin's enthusiasm. She relishes in sharing what she loves and who she loves with her audience. The baker who wakes up before dawn to make fresh bread. The farmer who travels hours to bring produce to the market. The chef who drives miles and miles and miles to source the highest quality produce for their meals. These are the people and stories that make up much of Samin's work. As for her story, she was raised in San Diego by Iranian immigrants, and came of age with an early appreciation for all things food. Her mother often driving more than 80 miles in search of meals that tasted like home. She then went to study English at UC Berkeley, where admittedly she spent more time working in kitchens and studying in classrooms. First at Chez Panisse, busing tables, later at other local restaurants in Berkeley until about 2009
We talk about each of those eras in today's conversation, and how they set the stage for both Salt Fat Acid Heat, and her new book. Good Things is a joyous collection of 125 recipes, filled with rituals and memories and friends. It's more personal than clinical though. It reads basically like an invitation to come over, take a seat, and enjoy the food that Samin so clearly takes pleasure in making, and also eating. So today, we begin by tracing the influences, both literary and culinary, that shape this new book. And we also talk about rediscovering a love of cooking during the pandemic, the joy of making a meal for your loved ones, the remarkable rise of Salt Fat Acid Heat, what the bear gets right about cooking, and how Samin tries in her work and in her life to make every second count.
Samin.

**Samin Nosrat** (3:11)
Sam.

**Sam Fragoso** (3:11)
Hi.

**Samin Nosrat** (3:11)
My buddy.

**Sam Fragoso** (3:13)
We never met before.

**Samin Nosrat** (3:14)
No, but we have similar names. Sam is my coffee name.

**Sam Fragoso** (3:17)
Is it really? Because you don't trust that they'll spell Samin, right?

**Samin Nosrat** (3:20)
That and also now I just want to attract as little attention to myself as possible.

**Sam Fragoso** (3:24)
As little attention as possible. I want to start with a basic question, but I feel like the only one I can start with, having read your book and gone through everything.
How are you doing?

**Samin Nosrat** (3:35)
Oh, that's really nice. Thanks.
I'm okay. It is an interesting thing to have to talk about yourself and what you've done and why. So I worked really hard for the book tour, especially for the book events to set it up so that I wouldn't have to do that for the in-person events. I asked basically my friends and people who I admire to sit in conversation with me in the hope that we will have some larger meaningful conversation. That's not just, tell me about your chicken recipe.

**Sam Fragoso** (4:09)
Well, let's give that a go. I think we can do that. You started working in restaurants back in 1998 at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.
But even as a sophomore in college, bussing tables, you had already developed a pretty complicated relationship to recipes. You were skeptical of them from moment one. Throughout the years in every interview, and I do mean in every interview, you would say some variation of the sentence, I am never ever going to write a cookbook with recipes.

**Samin Nosrat** (4:49)
I know. I'm here. I've made a fool of myself.
Enter a book of recipes.

**Sam Fragoso** (4:57)
For people who aren't watching, we have before us this new cookbook of excellent recipes. It's called Good Things.