Peter Hoffman, WHAT'S GOOD?: A Memoir in Fourteen Ingredients

[2:07]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Peter Hoffman is the author of What's Good? A Memoir in 14 Ingredients. Peter is the curious cook's cook. As the former chef owner of Savoy and Back Forty Restaurants, he trailblazed farm to table cooking in New York City. His opinion pieces have been published in the New York Times, Edible Manhattan, and Food and Wine. Hoffman served on boards of the Green Market and Chefs Collaborative and is a Slow Food NYC Snail Blazer Award recipient. On most market days, he can be found on bicycle, foraging Union Square Green Market for the best in seasonal ingredients and partaking in its village green community life. Doctor. Welcome, Peter. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss What's Good, a Memoir in 14 Ingredients.

[3:24]Peter Hoffman: Doctor. Yeah. Thanks, Zibby. It's great to be here with you. No problem.

[3:28]Zibby Owens: So would you mind telling listeners about your book and how you decided to even make this a book? What was the impetus for inspiration for starting it, and why this format? Yeah.

[3:40]Peter Hoffman: So let's see. The book is both a memoir, which is sort of my development as how I became a cook and then a chef and then an owner of a restaurant, running Savoy Restaurant in Back 40 for over two decades. And interwoven with that, sort of alternating chapters, there's memoir chapters, and then there are chapters about ingredients following the progress of the seasons in a year in the green market at Union Square. And so in some ways, it's a book that's about the business of being in the food world, and then the art and the passion, sort of, so that those ingredient chapters are my muses in many respects. It's sort of like what keeps me fired up as a cook and interested in the work itself, as opposed to sometimes that the business is what we have to get through to just keep it moving along. So it's interesting in that it kind of toggles back and forth so that you come with me and you stay with me as the cook that I am, and you're also learning about my growth and development and the challenges in the business and things like that. The impetus for the book in many ways was after having run restaurants for over twenty six years and worked as the chef and as the creative director and the teacher, auteur in many ways for lots of employees in in the restaurant, I realized that I had stories to tell that were mine alone. And I don't mean in any you know, that it's just in the development of my personal vision and that that moved cooks forward and changed the way that they viewed their work and their cooking, and it was time to put that down on paper so that more people could access than just the people who worked in my kitchens. And so that's what the book is. And it's this very interesting, kind of personal, it's about family, but it's scientific, but not too geeky and still pulls back the curtain on what life in a restaurant can really be like, a little bit environmental. You know, it's of a very interesting blend of those things that get, in many ways, go back right to what the title is, which is what's good? Why are we why are we cooking? Why are we living? What's what's it all about? And and to do that through foods that are not esoteric. They're they're ones that we cook with every day that we go to the farmer's market and bring back into our kitchens and want to have a deeper appreciation for so that we have a deeper appreciation for sitting down at the table and sharing a meal together. Amazing.

[6:39]Zibby Owens: I have to say I dog eared the chapter about strawberries, which are like probably one of my favorite foods. And you said that there's some amazing strawberry that's better than anything else that you've ever found before, so now I have to figure out how to track this down.

[6:51]Peter Hoffman: Well, next time you're so it's a three season berry. That's why it's called the TriStar, and because most berries, like the Long Island berries, they're finished now. Right? We've moved on to the darker fruits and the stone fruits and things like that. But the people who are growing the Tri Stars, and they're gonna be throughout the summer and into the fall. And if you're in the city, I'd be delighted to meet up with you and go to Union Square and show you the berries. Amazing. Alright. I'm gonna need to do that next time I'm in New York.

[7:24]Zibby Owens: Perfect. Well, I was really drawn well, there were two things that I found particularly interest one interesting. Well, many things, but whatever. One of them is that you were kind of a locavorser before this became a thing and, like, this eating locally, sourcing ingredients, all of that became like kind of exploded as something cool and hip to do. Whereas this was just your whole raison d'etre for sort of raison d'etre for how you were cooking to begin with. So that was one thing I wanted to talk to you about. And the other was like your very interesting family history and your mom's family from Nuremberg and like all of the backstory and then how religion kind of weaves into your food and the celebration of Passover and all of that. So let's quickly talk about the eating local piece of your cooking

[8:12]Peter Hoffman: aesthetic. Doctor. So, right, it's an aesthetic, not an aesthetic, right? But you know, I think there are couple of answers to that. One is is that I I studied in France with a woman named Madeline Kamen, and what she the world that she opened up for me was to really I already was having my problems with haute cuisine as a pursuit, as a culture, and as a cuisine here in New York City. And when I got to Madeline's, she really just took me by the shoulders and turned me a 180 degrees and said, what's really worth looking at is or are the regional cuisines of France and Italy. That's what she knew about. Because they are the foods and the dishes that grow out of a place. They grow out of the ecology of what grows here because of the geology and the rainfall and the exposure and all of that. And these are the dishes that reflect place and speak of place. And so I spent I mean, that was kind of mind blowing, life altering for her to do that for me. As I said, it finally turned me away from haute cuisine completely. And so I traveled around Europe looking for those regional foods and cuisines. And then when I came back to The United States, I was like, Well, what does that look like here? And pursued that, and some of that was about beginning to make connections with growers who were growing foods in our region, or maybe sometimes outside the region, but growing for taste and growing for excellence, not industrial production. And slowly, I started to realize that that was my point of inspiration in terms of what to cook, what's what what dish are we going to make. And so it was kind of combining the regional cuisines of Europe, in particular the Mediterranean, with what's growing in our region. And that's what we explored over those decades at at Savoy, and it's still the way I cook. I mean, I sort of have this balance between what's in the larder, what what's always on hand in my kitchen, and going to the market and going, what is peak freshness, peak ripeness, and what am I gonna come home with, and what's what are we gonna make for dinner? So, like, what'd you have for dinner last night? So dinner last night, it was cut you know, it was interesting. It's descriptive, but it you know? So it was sort of a pull together little bit of leftovers in a certain way. So there was some corn that I had grilled, and we didn't eat all of it the prior night. And I made a salad of the cold corn cold grilled corn with kimchi that was in the fridge and some cucumbers and and ripe peaches. So it was hot and sweet and spicy. So that was sort of a relish to go with some barbecued parts of chicken, also kind of leftovers. I had bought a whole chicken, used most of it for a dinner for four people, and what was left were two legs and a thigh that I split for just Susan and myself, and that was marinated in garlic and parsley and some anchovies to bring sort of umami salt into the picture, the little bit of smoke from the from the barbecue. And then What was this? Oh, and then I made a potato salad with rice vinegar and fresh cheese so from the garden. So Interesting. You know, very light, very simple, easy cooking, all that you know, it was still hot yesterday afternoon, and and the stove was only turned on to boil the potatoes, and the rest of it was outdoors or already already cooked. So you know? Awesome.

[12:22]Zibby Owens: Sorry. I I was just curious as to that that's, I mean, so interesting, all the different flavors and things that you wouldn't have thought would necessarily go together, but that's why you're a chef. But anyway, so tell me a little more about your family and the background. And I also thought it was so great how you wrote about Hortense. Is that how you pronounce your name? Your your sort of housekeeper growing up who cooked a lot at home and the influence of her and her cooking. Because I feel like most people do not discuss that so much in literature, and you have a very literary sort of memoir here. And anyway, tell me about that decision to include her. Right. So Hortense

[12:58]Peter Hoffman: was a wonderful person in my life and in my household. She was a black single mom, came from somewhere in The Carolinas. I'm not really sure where. Part of that whole great migration northward, and she was a great cook. And so that was part of her skill set of how to, I don't know, get out of the South, get out of poverty, and she was esteemed for for that work, not just by our family and by me, but by others. And I spoke with some one of her descendants over the last year, and and and the lore in the family about her was that she was a great cook as well. So there's real truth to that. The chapter is sort of a complex chapter, but it it starts out by saying that my parents, as much as they cared about good food, they were very obsessed with health, maybe economy as well, coming out of the depression and coming out of the the rationing of World War two, and they ate it was margarine, what was the the cooking fat in the house. And Ortiz came into the house, and she did some of the family cooking, and she knew that butter was way better than margarine. And and I quickly understood that she knew that she was a wise woman. And it's sort of like and she would always I don't know whether it was intentional or just, again, that there was she didn't use it all. But on the days that that she would leave, she would leave the half a stick of butter on a plate next to the to the butter tray where the margarine was. And so I quickly understood that the butter was better on toast than margarine. And I watched her cook, and she taught me some things. And, I mean, I was less than 10. I'm not exactly sure what years I'm talking about. But she taught me how to make a roux and how to make bechamel and and and things like that. And I realized that she had she had deep knowledge. And so that as so that was my entry into butter, and the chapter goes on to talk about butter and the role that it had in in French cuisine and sort of in my moment in some of those French restaurants was the moment of Nouvelle cuisine and the beurre blanc, which was sort of the the light butter sauce, not flour thickened like a bechamel is, but it's sort of a more a la minute made sauce and how it pervaded you know, everything was was finished. Vegetables were tossed in beurre blanc, and fish was you know, and it just was this, you know, it was over the top. And then I kinda turned my back on that. Part of that was also what Madeleine taught me. It was a moment in which people started to realize that olive oil was a great cooking fat. And olive oil, it was a couple of things. One is is that I I sort of make this whole analogy about emulsified sauces versus unemulsified sauces, the idea that the French wanted to make everything look uniform and, you know, enrobe a piece of fish with this sauce as opposed to maybe the more quintessential Italian fish sauce for me, which is salsa verde, which is chopped up parsley and capers and some anchovies and olive oil and raw garlic and all that. All the parts are discernible, right? There's no emulsification going on, and so that we're not hiding anything. And as I said, all the parts are discernible. So that is a huge departure from French cuisine, from French domination in what is high end food. So that's some of what that chapter is about and looking at that and and sort of talking about, again, sort of race and class issues, how they played out in the restaurant, because it was complicated. And lots of kitchens in New York City, at least, are are racially and class, have a class division in them. They're sort of the prep cook world and then the the line cook world, and I pushed against that and didn't really wanna have a class of of prep cooks. But in time, other chefs who came in from other places convinced me that the financial viability and increased productivity would be improved if we did that. And, you know, you gain certain financial viability, but you lose a certain culture and teamwork in a certain way and a and a certain connection to the to the craft itself. I mean, so that if you have a butcher I had a great butcher. My my line cooks didn't really learn and practice how to cut fish and cut chickens and and all of that any longer because there there was a skilled guy who rocked that out every day. And so it's harder to develop one's artisanal practice when you have that kind of division of division of labor. So I pushed against it, but I still had to figure out how to be, you know, financially viable in in the restaurant world in New York City. So Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[21:03]Peter Hoffman: So that's a little bit of what that chapter is. So as you can see, it's it's everything. It's sort of like I'm talking about what it was what was in my refrigerator when I was seven and who was in the house, Hortense, who taught me to love food, and then French restaurants, and then into my kitchen, and my wonderful butcher.

[21:24]Zibby Owens: So All the ingredients for your restaurant success, Yeah. So by the way, what so what are you doing aside from writing this book and everything? What is what's your plan now? Like what's your?

[21:37]Peter Hoffman: Well, you know, what I've decided is that I mean, I I thought pretty much that I was done with the restaurant business once I closed the restaurants. I was burnt out. I tell that story in in the book about some of what got hard and where I got discouraged. And I spent I was working on the book prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic was an incredible kind of focusing agent for me. There was nowhere to go. No obviously, you know, nobody to get together with, and so I would just go to my desk and work. And I came out of it with a book and came out of it realizing that I'm a writer. I'm not a and a food thinker or food adviser, but I'm not a restaurateur anymore. I'm I'm done with that. So I'm doing a little consulting work, and I have some ideas about what a second book might look like or pieces of it. There's a way that there were ingredients that I didn't get to cover in the book because it wasn't really an ingredient I mean, it has an ingredient base, but I wanted to just sort of do this arc through the growing season, and then there were ones that got left out. So I'm gonna go back and do those and tell those stories and figure out how to bring them together in a in another way. If you were just starting out now in the restaurant world,

[23:02]Zibby Owens: what would you do it again? Like, what like, with today's in today's climate?

[23:06]Peter Hoffman: Well, that's a that's a good question, Zibby. It's a really, really tough moment. I think that, you know, to I I think the pressures are what what we're seeing in many respects is this kind of move away from the middle. There's there's the high end restaurants, and then there's the more I don't wanna say fast food, but the fast casual and and the the cloud kitchens or the ghost kitchens. And I think it's very challenging for a small mom and pop or just a small artisanally run place to thrive. And but as a the goal of setting up a way to explore cooking and to to develop one's cuisine, I think there's still a lot of drive for that in young cooks who find that passion. And so were I 30 today like I was when we opened the restaurant? Yeah, I I think I would. I would find another way to try and make the equation work. It looks different. We have to figure out how to take care of all the people who are part of the operation in a way that is less exploitive than what the business has traditionally looked like. And that may mean that dinner has to cost more to the diner, but that's that's the real cost of dinner. And somehow, we have to as diners, we have to adjust to that, that it's not just that that's not a high end experience, but that's what what it means to have somebody cook for you or what it means to have an artistic mind building a menu for you. Interesting.

[24:45]Zibby Owens: Okay. And then in terms of writing, what advice would you give to an aspiring author having just completed this? Yeah.

[24:54]Peter Hoffman: Well, one of the things that was great for me, Zibby, was that I had a writing group. Okay. I wasn't really able to wrangle myself to the, you know, meet my own deadlines kind of thing, even though I tried to work at it every day. But having a group that met on a regular basis, for me, it was basically monthly, and needing to bring a piece to that, and so that was another chapter was a great impetus. And in the beginning, I mean, still was this, but the people I was the only kinda non real writer in in the group. Everybody else, they were English teachers or ghost writers and things like that. And and so I didn't always feel confident to critique their work, but in time, I realized that I am perceptive and have perception as as a writer or as a reader. And listening to that conversation of listening to other people talk about both my writing and other people's writing, it really upped my game, and I became a much better writer and a much better critic, or, you know, I don't mean in a snotty way, but just as a critical thinker. And so my writing improved dramatically because of that writing group and those relationships. So highly recommend not being alone with it and just getting comfortable putting it out there, and even if people kind of like I would come home in the beginning feeling like my piece had been torn to shreds and so a little discouraged, still knowing that people were encouraging me and that I should keep going. Excellent.

[26:48]Zibby Owens: Great advice. I know I'm always so afraid to show people, and then they have comments, I'm like, Ugh, but your comments are right.

[26:54]Peter Hoffman: Doctor. Well, that's the thing is, first of all, is that not all the comments are right. Not all the comments. But that's the thing. It's just like so you listen to it's not so much like, she didn't know what she was talking about. You know? So it's like, you just go like, okay. That one, I don't agree with. But the ones that do make sense, you go, yes, I already know that. And so there's an honesty that you can have with yourself and go, yep, that's true, and go back and go, okay, I want it to be better. So it's good to share it. Know, there's some way that we we feel secretive about it and we're protected. But in fact, it's gonna be a better product, and our editor's gonna be happier because it's far further along because someone has helped stimulate our thinking and made us up our game. Yes. A 100%. Yes. Excellent.

[27:49]Zibby Owens: Well, Peter, thank you so much. Thanks for talking about What's Game. Oh, it was wonderful to talk with you, Zibby, and and I'm glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for sharing it with all your peeps. My pleasure. Now I'm hungry. Now I got to go have some lunch after all this talk about food. Okay. See you at the first All right. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.