Why Cooking is Caregiving, with Chef Hillary Sterling | Better in Person

**Stephen Dubner** (0:00)
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. This is the second episode of a new video interview show we've just launched called Better in Person. If you'd rather watch it, which I would suggest you do, that's what it was made for, it is on the Freakonomics YouTube channel. But we're also happy to provide this podcast version of Better in Person for your ears only. As always, thanks for listening.
When people send back food, the whole rumor of a chef spitting, please.

**Hillary Sterling** (0:45)
I've never seen it. No. That's fucking stupid.
Come on.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:52)
This is Better in Person with Stephen Dubner and Hillary Sterling.

**Stephen Dubner** (0:57)
There aren't many things in this world that you absolutely need to survive and which also bring great pleasure.
Food is one of them. For some people, it is so pleasurable to cook for others that they build a career out of it. But it is a relentlessly demanding way to make a living.
I recently met a chef who doesn't seem to have lost the pleasure of cooking. Hillary Sterling is executive chef at Ci Siamo, a big, successful, very loud kitchen in New York City. She was born and raised in Brooklyn and she built her career in New York restaurants like Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill and the Michelin-starred Avocé. So when Hillary invited me into the kitchen at Ci Siamo, I of course said yes and I barely finished saying hello before she threw me right into the fire.

**Hillary Sterling** (1:44)
Can you give me the torch, Chris?

**SPEAKER_4** (1:47)
Hey, can you give me the torch?

**Stephen Dubner** (1:50)
Hillary leads me over to the big wood-fired oven and hands me the blowtorch to start today's cook fire. Oh, I love a flame thrower.
Ci Siamo celebrates live fire Italian cooking, and fire is fun until it's not. Can I see your hands?

**SPEAKER_4** (2:08)
How burned are you?

**Hillary Sterling** (2:09)
I mean, no, if you have burns, that means you're not paying attention.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:13)
Do you remember that burn? I remember all of them. Sterling points to a scar just above her right wrist.

**Hillary Sterling** (2:18)
I mean, this one right here, it was in 2003 It was in the oven at Mesa Grill.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:25)
Oh, yeah.

**Hillary Sterling** (2:26)
This one.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:26)
Where were you making?

**Hillary Sterling** (2:27)
I was reaching in the oven for my pork tenderloins and the guy next to me, Carlos, we were both reaching in at the same time and I moved over so he could get his steak or whatever out of the oven and I hit inside, there's like bars inside the oven. That's what that was.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:43)
So you learned a very important lesson that day.

**Hillary Sterling** (2:44)
Stop being so polite. Yeah.

**Stephen Dubner** (2:47)
Does it work? Does politeness work in a kitchen? I would think you have to really be a little bit strong headed, yeah?

**Hillary Sterling** (2:52)
Back then, it was a little different, but it took about a year for Carlos and I to work well together.
And I loved working with him the other two years. Okay.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:01)
Hillary now shows me how she makes cacio e pepe two ways with fresh pasta and with dried pasta. Before we taste, she asks me to listen as she tosses it in the pan.

**Hillary Sterling** (3:12)
There we go. See that noise? That's what I'm looking for.
We teach people how to make pasta with their eyes closed sometimes.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:17)
Oh. It's pretty, it's an erotic endeavor, isn't it? I mean, the whole thing about it.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:24)
I didn't say it, but yes.

**Hillary Sterling** (3:26)
But I teach them how to cook by using their senses, and that's my fault.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:30)
What's wrong with that?

**Hillary Sterling** (3:32)
People, humans are imperfect.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:34)
Right.

**Hillary Sterling** (3:34)
So, and guests do not want things that are imperfect.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:37)
Okay, now for a taste off between the fresh pasta and the dry. I try the dry pasta first.

**Hillary Sterling** (3:45)
I mean. It tastes like yours?

**Stephen Dubner** (3:46)
I'm doing right now what everybody I've ever seen eating on a food show does on TV, because what can you do other than say, mm, but it's really good.
So what I like is that the peppery-ness is intense and constant. Really, really good.

**Hillary Sterling** (4:00)
Eat that one. Yeah.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:01)