0:00

A few years back, my friend Justin Warner from Food

0:02

Network moved out to South Dakota. He opened a ramen

0:04

joint and he is always posting pictures of all the

0:06

great food he's not only cooking, but eating all over

0:09

South Dakota. He's always telling me to come visit. And

0:11

you know, one of the best ways to experience a

0:13

new place is to eat your way through it. But

0:15

it's equally important to live your way through it too.

0:17

And when you summer in South Dakota, you can fill

0:19

up on all the lake days, hikes, rides, and small

0:21

town strolls that'll leave you with a regained sense of

0:24

wonder and a hunger to do it all over again.

0:26

See why there's so much South

0:28

Dakota, so little time. travelsouthdakota.com. This

0:34

episode contains explicit language. So

0:38

I had read that when

0:41

you're testing recipes, which I guess is a lot of the time, you eat

0:43

a lot of cereal. Yeah. What

0:46

are some things you do to doctor a bowl of cereal?

0:49

Oh, I'm so glad you're starting this out

0:51

this way because I feel so passionate about

0:53

this subject. I actually, you know what? Yeah.

0:56

I started making my own cereal. Oh, wow. I'll just get

0:59

a little bowl for you. Oh my God, this

1:01

is so exciting. When

1:03

I'm developing recipes, especially when I'm working

1:05

on books, there are

1:07

so many flavors flying around

1:10

my kitchen and entering my

1:12

mouth. And sometimes

1:14

the best antidote to that is

1:17

just a bowl of cereal that's

1:19

not challenging to the palate.

1:21

And so I've invested deeply in

1:23

my cereal collection and there's six

1:26

or seven in my house at all times because

1:29

I really like to mix and match. But I recently started making

1:31

cereal. And so this bag here

1:34

has puffed rice, puffed kamut,

1:36

sesame seeds, sliced

1:38

almonds. And then the syrup that I

1:40

made for it is honey, turmeric,

1:44

coconut oil, vanilla,

1:47

and sea salt. And then you just bake it

1:49

for like 30 minutes. And

1:52

there's my cereal. I've

1:56

seen Jerry Seinfeld interview and he talks about how,

1:58

I think it's true, a lot of comics, like

2:01

every human interaction is an

2:03

opportunity to come up with a new bit.

2:06

I feel like that's kind of how your brain is with recipes. When

2:09

I need to take a break from recipe development, I

2:11

eat cereal and then I just go into my cereal

2:13

cabinet and like develop a recipe out of my cereal. It

2:17

never sleeps. ["The Sporkful"]

2:24

This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies,

2:26

it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week

2:28

on our show, we obsess about food to

2:30

learn more about people. Cookbook

2:33

author Molly Bos first found her following

2:35

online. This is a tried

2:37

and true recipe that we have. It's

2:39

BA's best carbonara. And what's special? It's

2:41

Bos TV, not best TV. Okay,

2:44

we have 30 seconds for doing BA's

2:46

dish from popular number. I'm wearing sneakers

2:48

that are embroidered with the word see

2:51

and sell for Caesar. Caesar salad. Molly

2:54

was one of the biggest personalities to come

2:56

out of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen YouTube

2:58

channel. And she parlayed that stardom to create

3:01

a whole lifestyle universe for her followers. She's

3:03

written two best-selling cookbooks, Cook This Book and

3:05

More is More. She's got a wine brand

3:07

and a wildly popular paid online recipe community

3:10

called The Club. She was even on

3:12

a Times Square billboard recently, which we'll get to later.

3:15

Everything Molly puts out just seems

3:17

so perfectly cool and stylish, so

3:19

carefully considered, so intentional, but yet

3:21

also so authentically her. I

3:24

want her to know, how does she do that? On

3:27

a recent trip to Los Angeles, I went over to her

3:29

house to talk with her and to try to get a

3:31

deeper understanding of how she works, starting with

3:34

how she develops a recipe. I'm

3:36

just pulling up the recipe here, but I

3:38

have been working on this fricking

3:41

cornbread recipe for the last couple of

3:43

weeks. We're in Molly's kitchen. You

3:45

might've seen it on Instagram or in her

3:47

books. It's a sunny, colorful space with walls

3:49

that are painted butter yellow. When Domino Magazine

3:52

did a feature on her house, they described

3:54

it as mid-century inspired California cool. The

3:56

day I'm visiting, Molly's about eight months pregnant, so we agree

3:59

that when we're not cooking, in the kitchen, we're going to

4:01

head over to the leather armchairs to sit down and chat.

4:04

When I asked Molly to let me watch her test

4:06

a recipe, she picked one that she's been developing

4:08

for her weekly newsletter. Her initial idea was for

4:10

a yogurt cornbread with feta and za'atar, but it's

4:12

been a struggle from the very first version. They

4:15

ended up just tasting like pizza without the

4:17

tomato sauce. Like it tasted like Domino's

4:20

breadsticks, like a reggano, dried

4:22

oregano, like overcooked cheese. Like

4:24

it was just like, it

4:27

just wasn't it. Molly tried adding tomatoes in

4:29

one test, then she swapped out the za'atar,

4:31

instead used the Japanese seasoning furikake in another

4:34

version. Then she took away the tomatoes again

4:36

next to the feta. Still, none

4:38

of these combinations were quite working. Today,

4:40

this is maybe the sixth version, it's

4:42

going to be a sweet corn and

4:44

furikake cornbread. And on half of it,

4:47

I'm going to dollop in fresh ricotta

4:49

and see whether having like creamy pockets

4:51

of ricotta is welcome there or not.

4:53

So we're going to have like a

4:55

half and half. So that's kind of

4:57

the genesis of this motherfucking cornbread that

5:01

I kind of hate right now. But that's

5:03

okay. Well, we're pushing through. But

5:06

like, is it possible that you would get to a point where this and just

5:08

be like, forget it? Oh, 100%. And normally

5:10

at this point, I would. But because

5:12

you were coming, I was like, you know what, let's

5:14

give it one more. Like, hurrah. There's a lot of

5:17

there's a high stakes here, Molly. Yeah, this is make or

5:19

break for this recipe. This is it. Yeah. Okay. If

5:21

we don't like this, it's fine. Like people will hear

5:23

about it on the podcast and it will never make

5:25

its way into the world. Which

5:28

is fine. All right. Should we start mixing

5:30

up? Yeah. Okay. So let me

5:32

just pull up my recipe notes. So

5:35

it's just like a one to

5:37

one ratio of flour and cornmeal,

5:40

which just through my testing has

5:42

proven to be a good ratio. This one has more

5:44

sugar than some of the other cornbreads I've developed. I

5:47

like a kind of sweeter cornbread as it turns

5:49

out. And then the thing that I

5:51

think makes this kind of special,

5:53

I'm adding a tablespoon of fur cocky here, is

5:56

that I have the skillet preheating right now

5:58

in the oven. I'm

6:02

going to add butter to the skillet as well

6:04

as to the batter and then pour the batter

6:06

into this piping hot skillet, which

6:09

immediately will start to cook

6:11

the batter and creates a

6:14

cornbread that has much crispier

6:16

browner edges than just your

6:18

average cake pan cornbread, which

6:21

is something I'm here for personally. That sounds

6:23

so good. You're pretty far

6:25

away from the initial inspiration now. You've

6:27

lost, the Zajar's out now, right? There's

6:29

nothing about the original recipe here. Right.

6:33

So how common is that when you're developing the recipe

6:35

that you end up so far away from the original

6:37

idea? I would say that 50% of

6:39

them come out pretty close

6:41

to the way they were

6:43

initially envisioned and the other 50 flop

6:47

right out the gates and I will

6:49

table those and they stay in my

6:51

notes app and more often

6:53

than not, like six months down the line,

6:56

I'll have some sort of a creative kind

6:58

of breakthrough where I'll be like, oh, that's

7:00

what that recipe that I was working on

7:02

six months ago was missing. It's

7:05

all about bringing something fresh to that

7:07

idea. That's where the breakthrough almost

7:09

always happens. It feels

7:11

a lot the way musicians describe songwriting, which

7:14

is like sometimes a song comes out

7:16

in eight minutes and it's just perfect. Other

7:19

times there's these kinds of fragments of ideas that

7:21

you sit on for a long time. It's exactly

7:23

the same thing and I

7:25

feel blessed when the ratio tips more

7:28

in the direction of like the eight

7:30

minute miraculous wonder.

7:33

The butter in the skillet has melted. There's

7:36

like a lake of butter. So Molly pulls the pan

7:38

out of the oven to add the batter. Now the

7:40

batter's going in. So

7:42

you can see that it's bubbling at the sides

7:44

already and like starting to puff. It

7:46

almost looks like an omelet. Okay,

7:49

and then we go back in the oven. 40

7:51

minutes ish. Okay,

7:55

I'm going to set a timer. With

7:58

the cornbread in the oven, Molly. and I sit down in the

8:00

armchairs to chat. I ask her about her

8:03

roots, and it turns out that her interest in food

8:05

does not come from her childhood. My parents don't move

8:07

above when I talk about this, but I've done it

8:09

on national television, so it's fine. Yeah,

8:12

we ate pretty simply. It wasn't unhealthy,

8:14

but they weren't

8:17

particularly inspired cooks. Food

8:19

growing up was like a pork chop. There

8:22

was a lot of dry pork chops, randomly

8:24

mint jelly in the fridge all the time.

8:26

You know that, like bright green stuff? And

8:28

I was always just like smothering

8:31

it on the overcooked meat, whatever

8:33

was served, because it tasted like

8:35

something, and like moistened it up.

8:39

Frozen peas, we ate a lot

8:41

of those. Chicken cutlets, buttered egg

8:43

noodles. Despite the dubious dry pork

8:45

chops and jelly, Molly was still curious about what

8:47

was on the table, which led her

8:49

to ask her dad a question. One day was like,

8:52

why are you drinking beer, and I have to drink

8:54

milk? What is that in that bottle that tastes so

8:56

good? And I tried his Rolling Rock, and I was

8:58

like, this shit's delicious. And so from then on, I

9:00

got to have a little splash of Rolling Rock

9:03

in my whole milk, and it flavored the milk

9:05

like Rolling Rock, and that's how I got it down. And

9:08

that was like our little secret that's not

9:10

a secret anymore, and probably

9:12

could have gotten child protective surfaces involved. I

9:15

mean, have you ever developed a recipe inspired

9:17

by that combination? No, I mean, that's so

9:19

foul. No one's going

9:21

to click on that recipe. Or maybe they will,

9:23

just because of it. I mean, if the headlines

9:25

started with like milk beer. Or

9:27

maybe I could do like a

9:30

milk braised meat dish that's like

9:32

got beer, and milk braised pork

9:34

energy, but like, involved beer. See,

9:36

Molly, it's already coming together. I'll

9:39

work on it. All right. The

9:41

spark for Molly's interest in food came during

9:43

a college semester abroad in Florence. Her program

9:45

placed her in a homestay with an older

9:47

single woman named Graziella. She was like in

9:49

her late 70s at the time. She was

9:52

an amazing cook, but not like in a

9:54

highfalutin fancy way at all. And

9:57

in fact, like she would be so embarrassed. to

10:00

hear me say that she is a great cook because she would

10:02

just be like, I'm just living.

10:04

Like, I'm not a chef, like,

10:06

I'm making dinner because we have to eat

10:08

tonight. But the dinners that she

10:10

was making because we had to eat tonight were

10:12

so delicious. That

10:15

experience over there of being

10:17

exposed to really

10:19

simple but like really flavorful, delicious home

10:22

cooking kind of changed the

10:24

game for me and was part of the moment

10:26

in my life where I realized I wanted to be in food.

10:29

When Molly returned to the States to finish her

10:31

degree, she jumped right into cooking. I

10:34

started this really embarrassing supper

10:38

club, as I called it, when

10:40

supper clubs were a thing and everyone was

10:42

like doing these like underground restaurants out of

10:45

their home. So I did that at my

10:47

off-campus house and I called it the private

10:49

dining experience, PDE for

10:51

short, which like really makes me cringe but also

10:54

I kind of love myself for having

10:56

done that. What do you love

10:58

about the fact that you did that? That like,

11:01

it was so uncool of me and I just kind of like

11:03

love that I was such a dork. Tell

11:05

me about the menus, like tell me, what were

11:07

you working for? Well, I guess that's what was the

11:10

most embarrassing part of them, if we're gonna get into

11:12

specifics. Like

11:14

the way that we wrote about the

11:16

dishes, it was very like fine dining,

11:18

which is, was totally the

11:20

opposite of my experience eating in Florence, but

11:22

like, it would be like

11:24

a seven course menu and

11:27

like the first course would

11:29

be like foie gras

11:31

macaron period, grape

11:33

coulee period, sesame

11:36

crumble and like that obviously

11:38

was also like a phase

11:41

in restaurants where like a

11:43

very less is more kind of like minimalist

11:46

approach to talking about menu items

11:48

which is very un-me now. And

11:51

yeah, we were just very ambitious with our

11:53

flavor profiles mostly and learning as much as

11:55

we could and so we would tackle all

11:58

sorts of new like, molecular. and you had

12:00

not had any professional training. No, no, no,

12:02

no, no, no. It was just, we

12:04

would sit in our bed, me and my best friend, we lived

12:06

together, we would sit in our bed and just pour over

12:08

cookbooks. I was

12:10

obsessed with the Flavor Bible. Do you know that book?

12:12

I've heard of it. I haven't read it. Okay, so

12:14

the Flavor Bible is a reference book that

12:18

lists pretty much every ingredient under the sun,

12:20

like from all cultures and cuisines, and

12:24

then under each ingredient, it

12:28

lists every other ingredient that has

12:31

been like

12:34

scientifically proven to pair well from

12:37

a flavor perspective. And

12:40

so it was like an amazing resource when we were

12:42

scrolling through like

12:44

the French Laundry cookbook and

12:46

we would see some like

12:49

poached lobster with chives and

12:52

I don't know, hazelnut foam. And we would

12:54

be like, well, what's a version of this

12:56

that we can make? How can we make

12:58

it ours? And maybe we would decide, okay,

13:00

like we're gonna do poached cod instead of

13:03

lobster and pistachio instead

13:05

of hazelnut. And I would consult the Flavor Bible and be like, what

13:09

pairs well with pistachios? Because at that point, I

13:11

didn't have enough eating experience under

13:14

my belt to be able to just like make that connection

13:17

on my own. And there

13:19

would just be like this long list of ingredients.

13:23

It would say like creme brulee or, coffee

13:26

grinds and it got our

13:30

creativity and like our creative

13:32

juices really flowing. And that's how we kind

13:34

of came up with a lot of our menus. I need to check on the

13:37

cornbread one time. Oh yeah, yeah, let's do it. Molly

13:39

and I head back to the kitchen. Oh,

13:42

okay. Goodbye, ricotta. The

13:45

ricotta has sunk in. The ricotta has sunk. But

13:48

that's okay. We're not mad about it. We're

13:51

gonna leave it in. Not quite ready. All right.

13:53

When Molly graduated college, she stopped doing the

13:55

private dining experience, but it did help convince

13:57

her that she wanted to cook in restaurants.

14:00

So she worked different jobs in fine dining,

14:02

learning the fundamentals of cooking and how to

14:04

meet the high standards her bosses expected. She

14:07

also learned some less obvious skills. Working

14:09

clean and organization, you

14:12

can't be a scatterbrain in a restaurant,

14:14

you'll just get swallowed up. And

14:17

so it really taught me principles

14:19

of organization and self-management,

14:21

time management, because it's

14:23

like you have this laundry list of

14:25

prep that you have to get done, and it's like, five

14:27

o'clock when we set up the line, hope you make it.

14:30

Right. That's the other thing, is like, it's a

14:32

physical dance. You don't want to waste a

14:34

step, especially when it's like eight

14:37

o'clock and you're on the line and there's like a hundred

14:39

tickets in the window. Making like

14:41

an extra couple of like turns

14:43

around to your oven is just so fumbly

14:45

and gets in your way. And

14:47

when you're really like in a flow, as

14:50

cheesy as it sounds, really feels like you're kind

14:52

of like dancing around. There's no jerky movements and

14:54

you're not like bumping into things. And

14:57

once you master that movement,

14:59

cooking can be so

15:01

like fluid and satisfying.

15:04

Molly liked the high pressure kitchens she worked in, in

15:06

New York and Boston, and she learned a ton. But

15:09

eventually she felt like she hit a ceiling. She

15:11

knew she didn't want to open her own restaurant because she didn't want

15:13

to live the life of a restaurant owner being chained to the place

15:16

for 80 hours a week. And she didn't

15:18

want to be a line cook forever. So she decided

15:20

to try her hand at food styling for photo shoots

15:22

and recipe testing for magazines and websites. That's

15:25

how she first got her foot in the door at

15:27

Epicurious, the online sister publication, Debana Petit. She

15:30

landed a freelance job testing recipes a couple times

15:32

a month in their test kitchen. But

15:34

she knew she wanted to turn that very part-time

15:36

gig into something bigger. I wasn't

15:39

like, okay, as soon as I'm done testing

15:41

recipes, I'm going to clock out and go

15:43

home. I was like, how else can I

15:45

help? I would walk into the studio next

15:47

door where they were shooting, you

15:49

know, some spread for the magazine and just be of

15:51

service and be like, oh, can I get you this?

15:53

Can I do that? Just

15:56

like, truly what happened is

15:58

that they were like, we need this. would

18:00

do it. This is my taste. Like you

18:03

come across as someone who has a certain

18:05

like a sure-footedness. Yeah. Like it

18:07

feels like from a pretty early point in your

18:09

career you kind of knew what you liked. Yeah

18:12

I think that's just part of my

18:14

personality is like I know what I

18:16

like and I am pretty bullish about

18:18

it in like hopefully not an

18:20

obnoxious way but some people probably think it's obnoxious

18:22

but that's okay. Like

18:24

I think it's always been in me I've always had

18:26

my preferences, my taste, my palate. It's not like I

18:28

one day was like oh and now I have a

18:30

palate. And where do you think

18:32

that belief in your own

18:35

taste comes from? It's just not

18:37

that hard to like decide whether you

18:39

like something. Like I when something

18:42

goes in my mouth I'm either like

18:44

this is this tastes great or not

18:46

and if it tastes great the question

18:48

is why and it seems

18:51

like a lot of the time it ends

18:53

up falling into this category of like oh

18:55

well it's really briny and it's really acidic

18:57

and there's just like really fresh element to

18:59

it and there's like good fattiness there's a

19:01

lot of balance so I don't

19:03

find it hard to find my

19:05

own taste because it's not an active

19:07

thing it's just like is

19:09

it good? Right. Right. I

19:12

think that like I have innate confidence which has

19:14

served me very well in my career but

19:17

even more so than that is

19:19

like a desire to prove myself

19:21

to myself. I don't know what

19:23

I would probably take

19:25

years of therapy to figure out exactly

19:28

what caused that in me.

19:30

So what are the components of a quintessential

19:32

molly-baz recipe? Well it depends like

19:35

if we're I think there are certain

19:37

ingredients that people see in a recipe

19:39

highlighted in a recipe and would be

19:41

like that's so very molly-baz and those

19:43

are like mortadella and pistachios and anchovies

19:45

and lemon and whatever but beyond that

19:47

I think it's like very

19:50

approachable food or food that feels really

19:52

familiar but then it just

19:55

has like this one little twist about

19:57

it and it's just like

19:59

it's It's got a wink. And

20:02

my flavor profiles tend to be like

20:05

very bright and herbaceous

20:07

and salty. And so

20:10

if those things resonate with you as an

20:12

eater, like, and you try my recipes, you're

20:14

like, oh, that's a Molly recipe, you know.

20:18

Oh, there's our timer. The cornbread timer goes

20:21

off. So Molly and I make our way back to the kitchen to

20:23

see if it's done. Here we go. Looking

20:25

better now, huh? Nice and browned on top. Beautifully

20:28

golden brown. Ferococke looks very pretty. Yeah,

20:31

it does. OK,

20:33

we're clean. We're coming out clean. How's

20:35

it smell? Interesting.

20:38

You know, ferococke can be kind of funky

20:40

sometimes. Obviously, there's a lot of seaweed

20:44

in it. So it's kind of got

20:46

like a fishy,

20:48

but it's funky. It's got a funky smell. But

20:50

I'm not mad about it. Molly

20:53

declares the cornbread to be done. It's a

20:56

deep golden brown, very dark brown around the

20:58

edges with a flecks of black and ferococke

21:00

across the top. I think it

21:02

looks amazing. But Molly says it's got to cool before we try it.

21:04

So I got to cool my jets a bit and wait to taste

21:06

it. Coming up, Molly gets a

21:08

new assignment that changes the course of her career.

21:10

And we find out whether this cornbread recipe is

21:13

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direct at choicehotels.com, where travels

22:30

come true. ["The

22:44

Food is a Good Book"] Welcome back to The

22:46

Sporkful, I'm Dan Paschman. Hey, if you're new to

22:49

the show, or just dragging your feet a little

22:51

bit, I hope you'll check out my new cookbook,

22:53

Anything's Possible, 81 Invented Pasta Recipes for Saucy People.

22:55

It's full of non-traditional pasta recipes, no tomato sauce

22:57

in this cookbook, okay? You got a scallion oil

23:00

bucatini with a runny egg on top, kimchi carbonara,

23:02

a zucchini and feta number with za'atar-toasted breadcrumbs on

23:04

top, and much, much more. And hey, just in

23:06

time for summer grilling season, there's a whole chapter

23:09

of incredible pasta salads, entitled Pasta Salads Redeemed, Fresh

23:11

and Bright, Hold the Mayo. To

23:13

pick up your copy, go to sporkful.com-slash-book. And

23:15

hey, if you want to hear

23:17

our podcast series on the making of the book, which I think

23:20

will totally change how you look at cookbooks, scroll

23:22

back in our feed to March, check out

23:24

our series, Anything's Possible. Thanks. Okay,

23:29

back to Molly Baz. While

23:31

we wait for the cornbread to cool, Molly and I sit

23:33

back down to talk about the big break in her career.

23:35

When she was a food editor at Bon Appetit, her bosses

23:37

asked if she would appear on camera in a video for

23:39

the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen. At that point, the

23:42

YouTube channel was in its infancy. The company was still trying

23:44

to figure out what they were doing with it, experimenting with

23:46

different formats and hosts. And Molly was

23:48

asked to do a video demo of that recipe for eggs

23:50

benedict for a crowd. She said yes. But

23:53

once the shoot started, it was a little nerve wracking. I

23:56

really do remember just like my

23:58

hands shaking I

24:00

stood on the other side of the

24:02

counter from everyone and I was like, this is

24:04

gonna be so awkward because my knife is gonna

24:06

be shaking all over the cutting board and then

24:09

YouTube is gonna rip me apart and be

24:11

like, she doesn't know what she's doing. And

24:14

it was so scary. And I remember

24:16

the first two minutes, I was really

24:19

jittery. Guys, I'm kinda nervous. Okay,

24:21

hold on. Getting it out.

24:24

Okay. And then I just

24:27

started cooking. And once

24:29

I was like in the zone, just cooking

24:31

and explaining what I was doing, I knew what

24:33

I was doing, I was very confident in

24:35

my recipe. All the

24:38

jitters went away. So after that

24:40

first experience, I was like, I think I

24:42

can probably figure this out. Molly

24:44

definitely figured it out. That first video went up

24:46

in early 2018. And

24:49

as she did more, her videos became incredibly

24:51

popular, racking up millions of views on the

24:53

BA Test Kitchen channel. She did instructional

24:55

videos like the eggs Benedict won, but she also

24:57

shot a video where she tried everything on

25:00

a specific restaurant's menu or learned how to butcher

25:02

a whole pager, cook ostrich eggs. And

25:04

all the while she was building her own following

25:06

too. Within a year of becoming a Test Kitchen

25:08

star, she signed a deal for her first cookbook,

25:10

which would become Cook This Book. And

25:13

the process of writing that book led to a big shift

25:15

for her. I think that's when

25:17

I realized like, oh, there's someone sees

25:19

value in my perspective, me,

25:22

Molly's perspective, not me,

25:24

Molly, for Bon Appetit's perspective.

25:28

And that is when I really started to think

25:30

about, well, then what is that perspective? And

25:34

not that I had to force it in any

25:36

way, but that I sort of had to like

25:38

put some barriers around it to like understand it

25:40

for myself and be able to like package it

25:42

and understand what my sort of

25:44

value is as a recipe developer and what

25:47

I'm good at, what my strengths are, why

25:49

people would come to me and my recipes.

25:52

If I can jump in real quick with my

25:54

own perspective here, this is such a key insight

25:56

that I think is important no matter what you

25:58

do. And when Molly said it, it really resonated.

26:00

with me. Like early on with the Sporkville, I

26:02

became a contributor to NPR. Okay, this was a

26:04

big opportunity. And I remember thinking, all right, NPR

26:06

can find a million people to come on and

26:08

talk about food and cooking. What am I bringing

26:10

to these segments? It's unique to me. I

26:13

realized I had to lean into my obsessive

26:15

nerdiness about the minutia of eating. So for

26:17

Valentine's Day, instead of talking about chocolatey desserts,

26:19

I did a segment about eating alone. And

26:21

I interviewed Deepak Chopra on the best way

26:23

to do it mindfully. That kind of thing.

26:26

Anyway, for Molly, working on cook this book helped

26:28

her answer those questions about what she could bring

26:30

to the table. While

26:32

she was writing it, she unexpectedly ended up

26:34

a free agent, because in 2020, her colleagues

26:36

at Bon Appetit alleged unequal pay for people

26:38

of color in their workplace. Molly

26:41

supported her co workers writing on Instagram that

26:43

the company had been allowed to quote, get

26:45

away with atrocious pay inequities for far too

26:47

long. Eventually, most of Molly's co

26:50

workers left the company and so did she. She

26:52

wrote on Instagram quote, I've asked Conde

26:55

Nash Entertainment to release me from the video

26:57

obligations of my contract. I will no longer appear

26:59

on the BA YouTube channel. Now

27:02

that she was on her own, she continued

27:04

working on her first cookbook and started a

27:06

subscriber service called the club where she began

27:08

sharing weekly recipes with paying supporters. She infused

27:10

the club with her trademark confidence in her

27:12

own taste, both in her recipes and in

27:14

her visual aesthetic, which is a huge part

27:16

of her social media, books and website. How

27:19

would you describe that aesthetic? But

27:21

it's like very bold and

27:23

unabashed and like

27:26

the photography is very like high contrast and it

27:28

just like it's it's food that knows what

27:30

it is and is

27:33

self assured in that and the brand,

27:35

the branding kind of supports that. And

27:38

actually the initial branding and kind

27:40

of like color design of

27:42

my first book was very

27:44

much inspired by my desire

27:46

to want to be a teacher and like

27:49

that food and cooking can be fun

27:52

is a huge part of my whole

27:54

brand. And so like the branding and

27:56

the books and the colors and the

27:58

shapes and the fonts. are all fun

28:01

and like big and bold and they're

28:04

like playful because I feel like if

28:06

people don't enjoy cooking,

28:08

they'll never do it. —Molly

28:10

says her husband, Ben Willett, has played a

28:12

big part in helping her develop that visual

28:14

aesthetic. He's a furniture designer who's also worked

28:16

in graphic and spatial design. As

28:19

Molly put it to the Taste podcast, she

28:21

has a creative director built into her marriage.

28:23

—So he really has helped me

28:25

figure out how to express

28:28

all those things I just mentioned about, that I

28:31

know about myself as a cook in

28:33

a visual language that could then translate to

28:36

like a website and a book and a

28:38

recipe layout, etc. —Molly was

28:40

thinking about all these things as she was building the

28:42

club and also as she was finalizing her first cookbook

28:44

and that led her to make very specific design choices

28:46

for the book. For one, she

28:48

decided to use primary colors to communicate that

28:50

the book was accessible, familiar, and she went

28:52

much further than that. For most

28:55

cookbooks, including mine, the author typically hires an

28:57

outside photographer to style and shoot the photos,

28:59

but the publisher's in-house team actually designs the

29:01

book. They take all those photos and the

29:03

writing and they figure out the fonts, the

29:06

colors, the layout, the cover, they bring it

29:08

all together. But for Cook This

29:10

Book, Molly hired an outside design firm to put

29:12

it together. —Yeah, and not only that,

29:14

an outside design firm that doesn't work on

29:17

cookbooks and had never designed a cookbook before.

29:19

—Why? —That were from France.

29:22

—Okay. —Because I was

29:24

like, I want to bring something new

29:26

and fresh to this landscape.

29:28

I want an agency that has never

29:30

thought about a recipe before to put

29:33

like their blank slate

29:35

eyes on what a recipe

29:37

could look like and how it could show up in

29:39

a book and how a cookbook could be designed. So

29:41

I chose this graphic design firm, Ville-en-Germis

29:43

from Paris, who already had an aesthetic

29:46

that was like, I felt very resonant

29:48

with me. It was like very colorful

29:50

and bold and I loved

29:52

their, they have a type foundry where they make

29:54

all their own custom fonts and I loved all

29:56

of those. And I did that also with my

29:58

second book and I... And I will continue to

30:00

do that always because I think otherwise

30:03

everything just becomes so like

30:05

derivative and iterative and it can

30:08

be boring. It's not just that

30:10

Molly wants her books to look different. She wants to

30:12

make the recipes more functional. Most

30:14

recipes you see have an ingredient list that

30:16

lists both the ingredient and amounts. So let's

30:18

say three tablespoons of olive oil, right? But

30:21

then when you get down to the instructions, it says add the

30:23

olive oil to the pan. So now you gotta look back up

30:25

to the ingredient list to remember how much olive oil you're supposed

30:27

to be adding. Because Molly thought

30:29

about the design of her book, she realized she didn't

30:31

like this format. That's not how human brain

30:33

works. And especially a novice

30:35

cook who's like trying to juggle

30:37

so much information at the same

30:40

time. So Molly decided to

30:42

format her recipes differently. There's an ingredients

30:44

list with quantities and then within the

30:46

instructions, she repeats the quantities. Another

30:48

big change from the norm, she put the

30:50

prep steps within the instructions at the time

30:53

you should actually do it. I don't see

30:55

the value in a recipe where the ingredients

30:57

are listed out and it says one onion

31:00

chopped, one bunch of cilantro

31:02

finely minced. And

31:05

then you don't end up using the cilantro

31:07

until the end of the recipe. And

31:10

it's like, were you supposed to just go

31:12

and like chop and mince everything at the

31:14

top of the recipe? Because that's what the

31:16

ingredient list said. Why would

31:19

you be mincing your cilantro four hours

31:21

before you serve your braise that it's

31:23

going to garnish? And that's

31:25

not how a real cook cooks. And

31:27

so my recipes tell you when to do every

31:29

step of the recipe, including all of those prep

31:32

steps, because it's efficient and it's

31:34

like good practice as a cook. Apparently

31:37

lots of people agree with Molly's recipe design choices.

31:39

Her first book was a New York Times bestseller

31:41

when it came out in 2021. She

31:44

followed that up last year with a second bestseller, More

31:46

is More. Same juicy fonts and

31:48

bold primary colors and the same authentic

31:50

Molly. These

31:55

days Molly's at work on a third cookbook and she's

31:57

putting out weekly recipes for the club. and

32:00

Barra line and a wine brand. But

32:02

this isn't just any old wine with Molly's

32:04

face slapped on the label. Her friend, Andy

32:06

Young, is the winemaker, and he created these

32:08

wines specifically to go with Molly's taste. He

32:11

basically cooks through my recipes

32:13

and knows my palate really well and

32:16

understands my food, and then creates wines

32:18

that he think will pair well and

32:21

live well in the context of my food.

32:24

And so if my taste resonates with

32:26

you, you can rest

32:28

assured that the wines are probably going to

32:30

satisfy you as well. One

32:32

of Molly's more recent brand collabs got a

32:34

lot of media attention. Molly appeared on a

32:36

billboard in Times Square with her pregnant belly

32:38

on display, holding a couple of her homemade

32:41

lactation cookies up to cover her breasts. The

32:43

caption read, just add milk. The billboard was

32:45

for a breastfeeding company called Swell. It

32:48

was a bit saucy, but certainly not any

32:50

more risque than the many, scandily-clad underwear models

32:52

plastered all over Times Square. Still,

32:54

Clear Channel, the company that owns the billboard, flagged

32:56

the image and swapped it out for a different

32:59

version. On Good Morning America, Molly

33:01

had this to say. It's super

33:03

disheartening and infuriating to me

33:05

that my kind of first

33:07

public foray into being a

33:09

public mother was one

33:12

that was deemed inappropriate. From my

33:14

perspective, the imagery that we put together

33:16

was no different from any of the

33:18

other ads that are in Times Square.

33:21

On Instagram, she was even more pointed,

33:23

writing, quote, bring on the lingerie so

33:25

long as it satiates the male gaze.

33:28

A week later, a company called Seed donated their

33:30

billboard space so Molly's ad could run. This

33:33

all happened after I was at her house, so

33:35

I didn't have a chance to talk with her

33:37

about it. But the incident both deepened her brand

33:39

and felt like a step towards advocacy. Her public

33:41

statements were more pointed than her typical content. And

33:44

when I was with her, we did talk about

33:46

this idea of Molly Bos as a tastemaker and

33:48

a brand. So Molly, I have

33:50

a quote here from a profile that Eater did

33:52

of you from 2023. I

33:55

want to read this to you and get your thoughts. So they

33:57

write, Molly Bos

33:59

has an... to make her choices

34:01

feel like the cool choices. Even if you hate

34:03

olives and anchovies, you still want what she's making.

34:06

She's created her own in-group, one that never seems

34:08

totally out of grasp. The most

34:10

uncool among us can still emulate Molly Bos and

34:13

our cooking, even if we'll never be able to

34:15

afford the gorgeous home or

34:17

conceptualize our own viral recipes or

34:19

look great in a messy bun and apron

34:22

or possess a preternatural ability to find the

34:24

right pose for Instagram every single time. Yes?

34:27

Like, how intentional is all of

34:29

that? How do you

34:31

feel about that description and

34:35

how intentional is it? I feel a little embarrassed by it, because

34:39

I'm a human being. And,

34:43

like, it's a little bit cringy because

34:46

it makes it feel

34:48

like I've constructed this

34:51

world in, like,

34:53

a contrived way to put a certain

34:56

image or vibe out.

34:59

And what I hope

35:01

is understood is that it's

35:04

more about me achieving

35:07

my own goals and

35:09

satisfying my own tastes

35:11

and living life

35:13

the way that I want to

35:15

internally that then gets

35:18

projected externally because I'm a public figure

35:20

and the work that I do gets

35:23

put out into the world and

35:26

less about being like, let

35:28

me craft this perfectly

35:30

imperfect version of

35:32

myself to project into the world. You

35:34

know what I mean? And there's

35:36

just, like, a nuance there where, like, I think

35:40

it comes from an authentic place of just, like,

35:42

me being me. And if it

35:44

lands that way, that may be the case. But

35:46

not because I sat down with my team and

35:48

was like, you know, how can we kind of

35:50

shape up this picture that's being put out in

35:52

the world? What's missing in the Molly brand? Like,

35:55

it's not like that. Right. And

35:57

that's kind of the nuance that's maybe missing from

35:59

that statement. And

36:01

by the way, I don't have some degree

36:04

in marketing where I'm like, okay, here's

36:06

the strategy here. I just

36:08

know how to cook and I am a human.

36:10

So yeah, there wasn't a lot of training

36:14

or something to put this

36:16

out in the world. Right, and

36:18

honestly, I think that all this surface-y

36:20

stuff notwithstanding, I think that underlying that,

36:22

people sense your confidence in yourself and

36:25

that's more of the appeal than

36:27

how the room is decorated. Yeah, totally.

36:29

But then the way

36:31

it gets described involves the

36:33

butter kitchen, which we love.

36:36

Yeah. Should

36:39

we eat some cornbread? Yeah, let's eat some cornbread. All

36:41

right. I feel like it's ready. We head back into

36:43

Molly's kitchen where the cornbread is now finely cool

36:46

enough to slice into and. Ooh,

36:48

look at that pocket of ricotta. Oh my God. That's

36:51

fun. This is from the non-ricotta side,

36:53

but it's peeking through. It's

36:56

nice and steamy. Molly, what are your

36:59

observations slicing into this? Okay, well, I'm

37:01

loving how moist the crumb is actually.

37:03

It's almost custardy. Like it's

37:06

almost corn pudding-y

37:08

in a really fun way. And

37:11

then I'm loving the color that

37:13

we got on top. I

37:15

baked this at a higher temperature than I

37:18

did last time. As Molly

37:20

cut slices, she tops each one with a dollop

37:22

of butter. Here, did you get some butter on

37:24

yours? And a generous sprinkle of finishing salt. Okay,

37:26

here's yours. You

37:29

wanna take the first taste? Yeah. Are

37:31

you gonna taste with me or I'm gonna- Yeah, I'll taste with you. Let's taste together.

37:39

That is a moist fucking cornbread. Molly

37:41

is right. I mean, so often cornbread

37:43

is dry. This might've been the moistest

37:45

cornbread I have ever eaten. It was

37:47

almost melty. Okay, well, for

37:51

starters, I know I want more fur kake already.

37:57

I love the addition of the sweet corn.

37:59

I love it. But I agree with you, it

38:01

could use more for a cate. Yeah, if we're going to

38:03

spend money on an ingredient, let's make sure we can taste it.

38:05

Right. So to be

38:07

clear, this was

38:10

a good enough test to save this dish from

38:12

the trash heap. It's true. I said it was

38:14

either going to be in or

38:16

out after this. We're

38:18

staying in. It lives to

38:20

fight another day. I've made six cornbreads

38:22

now in the last

38:25

nine days. That's a lot

38:27

of cornbread to have in your house. Molly

38:29

tells me once she does another pass and

38:31

finalizes the recipe, she'll take better photos and

38:34

publish it to her recipe club. And

38:36

then, hopefully, her fans will make it and

38:38

love it. It is so nice to see

38:40

having this experience then translate out into

38:42

the world and have people take

38:44

pictures at a picnic and be like, at

38:47

Molly Bos, we brought your cornbread. It

38:49

was a game changer and everyone's eating it

38:51

and it's so convivial and bellies

38:54

are fed. That's the best. That's

38:56

everything, really. That's

39:00

Molly Bos. And

39:11

hey, good news, Molly just posted the recipe

39:13

for that cornbread. It's only available through The

39:15

Club, which is Molly's recipe subscription. To sign

39:17

up, go to mollybos.com/club. And there's a seven

39:19

day free trial, so sign up, get the

39:21

cornbread recipe, check out everything else going on

39:23

there, and if you like it, stick around.

39:25

Also, check out my Instagram to see photos

39:27

of that cornbread and a video of the

39:29

exact moment that Molly did her taste test.

39:31

On Instagram, I'm at the sporkful. And be

39:33

sure to check out Molly's cookbooks. More is

39:35

more and cook this book. Finally, some exciting

39:37

cereal news. Molly's appearing on a special edition

39:39

of the Special K cereal box. She did

39:41

a photo shoot a couple weeks after I

39:43

saw her in the wake of that dust

39:45

up around my lactation billboard. The shoot was

39:47

just days before she gave birth. Molly wasn't

39:49

kidding when she said she loved cereal. Oh,

39:53

also, since I talked to her, Molly had her

39:55

baby. They're all doing well. That's

39:57

exciting too. Next

39:59

week, On the show, we are searching for the

40:01

Donut King, a man named Ted Noy who fled

40:04

genocide in Cambodia and started a donut empire in

40:06

Southern California. But not long after,

40:08

he lost it all and disappeared. We'll try

40:10

to find him. That's next week. Why

40:13

wait for that one? Check out last week's episode with

40:15

Chef Yee Yee Vang, who was the first ever to

40:17

sell Hmong food at the Minnesota State Fair. Find out

40:20

why Hmong food is Yee's family legacy. That's up now.

40:23

This show is produced by me, along with senior producer,

40:25

Emma Morgenstern, and producer, Andres

40:28

O'Hara. Editing by Nora Richie. Our

40:30

engineer is Jared O'Connell. Special thanks

40:32

to Ella Barnes. Music helped

40:34

from Black Label Music. The sporkful is a

40:36

production of Stitcher Studios, our executive producers are

40:38

Colin Anderson and Nora Richie. Until next time,

40:40

I'm Dan Paschman. And I'm Rose in

40:43

Minneapolis, reminding you to eat more, eat

40:45

better, and eat more better. NetCredit

40:55

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