Special Sauce With Ed Levine

This week I'm talking with Hamissi Mamba about the long road to success from his native Burundi to the vibrant food scene in Detroit.

On the second Special Sauce episode Kenji and I did live from the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY last March we talked about his latest book ‘The Wok’, Kenji and I successfully cooked eggs and tomatoes in a wok onstage and I didn’t get fired as his sous-chef for inadequately chopping the scallions.  Kenji also answered questions from the audience ranging from the best oil to cook with in a wok to how to involve young children in cooking. He also told us what happened when he made a  creme brulee for an architecture class project at MIT. I'm not sure it went well. Kenji and I had so much fun we thought people would enjoy listening again. Kenji of course has been very busy since we taped this episode last year. He was a judge on the Roku Channel's sushi competition show Morimoto's Sushi Master. And Kenji's Cooking Show on Youtube continues to entertain and inform millions of subscribers.

Last March we did our first ever live to tape episode of Special Sauce with our great friend J. Kenji Lopez Alt. It was taped before a wildly appreciative audience at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We were celebrating the publication of Kenji's book ‘The Wok’. With Kenji's mother and my wife in the house it was a family affair with lots of laughter and love emanating from the stage. This past May ‘The Wok’ won a James Beard Award for best Single Subject Book, so we thought it would be fun to revisit the lovely evening we spent at the Bell House.

This week on Special Sauce pitmaster, chef, and whole hog barbecue evangelist Rodney Scott gives serious eaters great tips for our July 4th backyard barbecues.

This week on Special Sauce I talk to NYT Cooking contributor Ali Slagle about her path to becoming a recipe developer. Slagle just published her first cookbook ‘I Dream of Dinner (so you don't have to)’.

This week on Special Sauce, we have a chef who suggests you DON’T try his recipes at home.It’s part 2 of my conversation with Rick Easton, owner of Bread and Salt, the casual spot in NJ that draws rave reviews for its Italian breads, pizza & sandwiches. We also take a deep dive into ‘Bread and How to Eat It’, the book Rick wrote with his partner Melissa McCart.

This week's guest on Special Sauce is the extraordinary bread baker, chef and pizzaiolo Rick Easton, who owns the terrific weekends- only Bread and Salt Bakery in Jersey City. Rick and his partner Melissa McCart have co-authored the provocative new book ‘Bread and How To Eat It’. In his review of Bread & Salt's Roman style pizza, sandwiches and bread, NYTimes food critic Pete Wells declared: "Mr. Easton has a singular vision, and it is the reason the food is so compelling."

This week on Special Sauce, we’ll revisit my conversation with one of our greatest food writers, Jessica Harris, who introduced many of us to the food of the African Diaspora. Jessica was awarded the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. The hit Netflix series ‘High on the Hog’, hosted by Stephen Satterfield, was based on Jessica’s book of the same name. The show is returning for its second season later this year.

On this episode of Special Sauce we're talking about the film ‘Fresh’, which Amy Nicholson in the New York Times described as a wickedly funny cannibal romance. The movie stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Sebastian Stan and Jonica T. Gibbs Helping me savor the best cuts of the film are two terrific food writers and film enthusiasts, J. Kenji Lopez Alt and the Smitten Kitchen's Deb Perelman.

On this episode we revisit our conversation with Fly by Jing founder Jing Gao. Jing has not been idle since we spoke to her last August. She's getting ready to open Sua, a restaurant/market in LA in July. And in September her first cookbook, The Book of Sichuan Chili Crisp: Spicy Recipes and Stories from Fly By Jing's Kitchen, is being published.

On this episode of Special Sauce James Beard Award Winning Chicago Chef Beverly Kim tells us how how she went beyond serving food to serving her community. Kim explains how she juggles motherhood, running two restaurants, and her activism.

This week on Special Sauce Ed Levine talks about the difficulties of work-life balance in the restaurant biz and much more with the James Beard Award-winning chef Beverly Kim. Her first restaurant Parachute is the critically acclaimed contemporary Korean restaurant in Chicago she runs with her husband Johnny Clark. Together they won Best Chef in the Great Lakes category, at the James Beard Awards in 2019. These days Beverly and Johnny are also busy with their second restaurant, Wherewithal, and with raising their three children.

This week on Special Sauce, Kenji and film critic Glenn Kenny dig into The Menu, the satirical horror comedy film set in an exclusive restaurant on a private island. The film, starring Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor Joy, skewers foodies, the ultra wealthy, celebrity chefs, and so much more.

This week on Special Sauce, we're revisiting a great 2022 episode about pizza featuring the great pizzaiolo Anthony Mangieri and his friend and fellow pizza lover Billions co-creator Brian Koppelman. At the time pizza purist Mangieri had just reopened Una Pizza Napoletana on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Now because Tony loves sipping espresso in cafes he has recently turned Una into a cafe on Saturday mornings serving coffee, pastries like an olive oil layer cake, and even a mortadella sandwich on house-baked bread. And now in a surprise twist Anthony Mangieri now has a line of frozen pizzas made in Italy with buffalo mozzarella called Genio della Pizza. And when I caught up with Koppelman he told me that he's been so busy with writing and producing season 7 of Billions that will see the return of Damian Lewis and his character Bobby Axelrod, AKA Axe, he hasn't even had time to do much pizza exploring.

This week on Special Sauce Kenji goes deep into his foolproof pan pizza recipe, which is one of Serious Eats' most popular posts of all time.

Kenji created quite a stir recently with his column on Chicago Thin Crust Pizza in the New York Times. We're gonna talk about that column and many other pizza related topics on this episode of Special Sauce.

*It is with much sadness that we acknowledge the passing of this week's guest on Special Sauce, Raghavan Iyer. Raghavan died just after we posted the second part of our extraordinary conversation. Iyer was a passionate, fierce advocate for Indian food and culture. As I mentioned in the episode he probably taught more Americans to cook Indian food than anyone else. And he faced his longtime battle with cancer with uncommon grace, courage, and determination.  This week on Special Sauce we continue our conversation with Indian food evangelist Raghavan Iyer. You'll hear more of Raghavan's insights on curry history, and we'll hear how living with his cancer diagnosis changed his outlook on food and life.

Raghavan Iyer has written 6 influential cookbooks on Indian food, including the all-time classic 660 Curries. On this episode of Special Sauce we’re going to hear about his own personal food journey, from the family table in Mumbai to a publishing lunch at Betty Crocker that changed his life.

This week on Special Sauce Kenji waxes (pun intended) poetic on the secrets to both seriously delicious french fries that taste just like McDonald's when they are fresh out of the fryer (that's when you have to eat 'em). He also gives some seriously helpful tips on roasting potatoes.

This week on Special Sauce hilarious cookbook author JJ Goode is back to go into detail about why he insists he's "America's best worst cook." JJ explains why and how he's ruined innumerable grilled cheese sandwiches at home. And yet JJ insists that his cooking cluelessness makes him a better collaborator on chef's cookbooks.