Francis Lam

As a popular food writer and author of more than 30 cookbooks, Melissa Clark has developed hundreds of recipes. Many of her favorites were inspired by her travels abroad, trips on which she embarked as early as her childhood. She talked with Francis Lam about the culinary inspiration she gains from international travel. Over the years, Melissa has shared with us her globally inspired recipes for Turkish-style Bulgur “Pilaf” with Swiff Chard and Dried Apricots, Pan Bagnat, and Max’s Arctic Char w…

The kitchen incubator group, La Cocina, has helped many immigrants realize their dreams in the Bay Area of California. The group helps people with everything from a business plan and legal issues to branding and menu design. Two newcomers to the group are Wafa and Mounir Bahloul. Their business concept, Kayma, has been picked to be part of La Cocina’s food hall, opening in 2020. Francis Lam visited the couple in their home to talk about what’s like to be newly arrived in the U.S. and searching f…

In our episode Confessions of Culinary Superfans, we asked some of our favorite food people who they’re fans of, and how they inspired them to cook or eat or just be themselves. Preston Clark is the executive chef of Lure Fish Bar in New York and Miami. He’s a chef’s chef, someone known for doing his thing not for glory or attention, but just for the love of great cooking. And he didnt have to look far for his hero, his own famous father, the late chef Patrick Clark. Francis Lam talks with Prest…

Our contributor Shauna Sever is a fantastic baker who didn’t have to think for even a second when we recently asked her who she’s a super fan of. Her answer: Maida Heatter. Heatter’s cookbooks have inspired countless home bakers and pastry chefs. She was over 100 years old at the time we recorded this interview with Shauna, and sadly, Maida passed away a few weeks later. But Shauna’s love for her lives on! She talks with Francis Lam about why she was drawn to Maida’s work and her recipes, and ab…

If we were to walk around and ask random people, “Who’s your cooking hero?” we bet we wouldn’t have to go far before someone said, Melissa Clark. A star on The New York Times food page for years, author of dozens of cookbooks, and soon to be your new favorite podcaster -- more on that below -- she is a master of knowing exactly what you want to eat before you know you want to eat it. We thought it would be great to talk to her about the recipes she is a superfan of; turns out she is quite fond o…

We began this year’s Thanksgiving evening, Discovering Thanksgiving with Four American Chefs, with Ann Kim, the chef-owner of Young Joni, Pizzeria Lola, and Hello Pizza in Minneapolis. I mean, if a Korean immigrant becoming a James Beard award-winning pizza chef in the midwest isn’t an American story, you tell me what is. I sat down with Ann to talk about her first Thanksgiving after coming to America and how the sacrifices of her family has shaped the chef she’s become. She also shared recipe f…

For years, the Indian-born chef Maneet Chauhan ran the kitchen of an absolutely delicious restaurant in New York called Vermilion. It eventually closed, I missed her food, and for years I watched her as a judge on the show Chopped, and I figured she might have left restaurants for a life in media. And then I learned that she’d actually moved to Nashville, and built a whole collection of restaurants there, marrying flavors from India and inspiration from the South and around the world. And I’d he…

To Damira Inatullaeva and her Uzbek roots, cooking is not simply cooking, it is a way of socializing and sharing knowledge. So, we were excited when we were recently invited into her home to learn to make a very special dish. Damira is a retired cardiologist and her husband Sahib Aminov was a professor of Central Asian history at the University of Samarkand; they came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan seven years ago. Damira now teaches Uzbek cooking classes in her Brooklyn home as part of the League…

Saliha Mahmood Ahmed is a doctor in London, who turned her passion for cooking into a winning appearance on the British TV show Masterchef. Then, she turned her other passion, for culinary history, into Khazana, a cookbook of dishes inspired by the long-defunct Mughal empire. Yes, the empire that conquered Central Asia through north India, and built the Taj Mahal. But, what do we know about their food? The multitalented and ever-curious Saliha joined Francis Lam to tell us all about it. You can…

There are a lot of questions and concerns right now around the coronavirus and the safety of our food. The science behind all of this is an everchanging field of study, but we wanted to learn the current findings and recommendations for keeping safe not only with home-cooked food and delivery, but also when out in public shopping for food and grabbing take-out from restaurants. We learned a lot from food science writer J. Kenji López-Alt. He is the Chief Culinary Advisor of Serious Eats and the…