Home Cooking · Samin Nosrat & Hrishikesh Hirway

Cod Save America (with Wesley Morris and Dr. Sumesh Hirway)

April 22, 2020·1 hr 3 min·5 clips

Samin Nosrat shares why she skips olive oil in her hummus for a smoother, authentic texture.

1. Home Cooking, a quarantine miniseries hosted by Samin Nosrat and Rishi Hirway, tackles listener cooking questions in its third episode while featuring guest Wesley Morris and Dr. Sumesh Hirway. 2. Samin Nosrat is a cookbook author and food writer known for Salt Fat Acid Heat; Rishi Hirway is the creator of Song Exploder; Wesley Morris is a Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic at the New York Times and host of Still Processing. 3. The episode asks: how do you cook well with what you have during a lockdown, and how do you share food safely with neighbors? 4. Samin describes burning two consecutive sourdough loaves in a Dutch oven due to loose timing, attributing the failure to not following the recipe strictly, while two more loaves are proofing in the fridge. 5. Rishi made hummus in a Vitamix from a CSA box of carrots, using one can of chickpeas, two spoonfuls of tahini, olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice from his backyard lemon tree. 6. Samin explains her hummus method — no olive oil inside, heavy tahini, abundant lemon juice, and a food processor run long enough to achieve a very smooth texture, with olive oil and za'atar added on top. 7. Listener Miranda from Costa Rica asks why cookie recipes call for both granulated and brown sugar; Rishi correctly explains that molasses in brown sugar adds flavor and reacts with baking soda to release carbon dioxide, creating interior texture. 8. Samin adds that molasses makes brown sugar feel like wet sand and increases the final chewiness of baked goods, which is especially prized in American-style cookies like oatmeal cranberry. 9. Rishi's most recent chocolate chip cookies used a tablespoon of vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract and dark brown sugar instead of light, with a Stella Parks technique of mixing multiple dark chocolate brands at different cacao percentages. 10. Dr. Sumesh Hirway, Rishi's retired food scientist father, joins by phone and quotes J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's SeriousEats Food Safety and Coronavirus guide, noting the virus is fragile and destroyed by heat. 11. Dr. Hirway recommends sharing soups and stews with neighbors because they can be reheated to a rolling simmer held for five minutes, and identifies sushi as the one food type to avoid sharing entirely since it cannot be reheated. 12. He describes his own contribution to condo neighbors: turkey keema, a minced meat curry with peas and tomato sauce, prepared with a mask, sanitized surfaces, and clean utensils. 13. Listener Charlene accidentally bought canned sardines when she already had anchovies; Samin explains that anchovies are preserved in salt and become concentrated seasoning agents, while sardines have more meat and work better as a main ingredient. 14. Samin provides two sardine recipes: a sardine and white bean salad with olive oil, red wine vinegar, and pickled onions; and pasta con le sarde, a Sardinian dish with saffron-cooked onions, pine nuts, currants, fennel seeds, and chili flakes. 15. Listener Isabel from Canada has frozen cod, salmon, sole, and pollock; Samin recommends making a fish stew starting with a 40-minute stock using broken fish pieces, white wine, canned tomato, celery, and fennel tops. 16. Samin suggests dissolving a spoonful of powdered gelatin into the strained fish stock to replicate the mouth-coating richness that fish bones normally provide, calling it a molecular gastronomy shortcut. 17. Listener Sarah from Brooklyn writes in while sick with COVID-19 and experiencing anosmia; Samin explains that approximately 75-80% of taste is smell-dependent, but that capsaicin heat is a pain-based physical sensation that bypasses the olfactory system entirely. 18. The episode uses a call-and-response format between Samin and Rishi, with Samin providing culinary expertise and Rishi asking clarifying questions that model a home cook's perspective; the tone is warm, unscripted, and frequently comic. 19. Home cooks curious about pantry staples, quarantine substitutions, and the food science behind baking ratios will find this episode practical and accessible. 20. Listeners seeking restaurant-level technique instruction or who are uncomfortable with COVID-era framing will likely find the episode too casual and period-specific.

As heard by us

A loose, useful quarantine-cooking chat with sourdough humility, strong fish-stew advice, and host banter that mostly earns its sprawl.

Home Cooking treats quarantine dinner as a pantry puzzle, but the pleasure is how little shame it attaches to getting things wrong. Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway open with sourdough triumph followed by burned, stuck loaves, which sets the tone: useful advice, lightly…

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