Food Friends: Home Cooking Made Easy – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Do you ever find your soups bland, and missing that extra something — like a zippy, flavorful sauce that turns a humble meal into something extra special? 

In this bite-sized episode, we share delicious moments about the best things we ate this week to inspire each other – and you! 

You’ll want to make this hearty bean soup topped with herby green hot sauce that comes together in seconds in your blender, and you’ll get inspired to serve dinner in a crispy tortilla bowl – filled with an updated take on the classic taco salad that’s full of veggies, and makes for an easy meatless meal. 

Tune in for a quick dose of home cooking inspiration!

***

Links to from this week’s show:

Sonya’s Yemenite white bean soup with zhoug

How to make crispy taco salad shells from Natasha’s Kitchen, and a roasted cauliflower taco bowl to serve inside it from Budget Bytes

For a more classic take, try taco salad by Sohla from  NYT Cooking

***

We love hearing from you — follow us on Instagram @foodfriendspod, or drop us a line at [email protected]!

Or give us a CALL on our kitchen phone! 323-452-9084

Sign up for Sonya’s free Substack, or order her debut cookbook Braids for more Food Friends recipes!

Are you ready to simplify your fall hosting while still impressing your guests, whether for holidays, potlucks, or casual dinners with friends?

Fall gatherings can be overwhelming, from multi-course holiday dinners to last-minute potlucks. This episode provides you with 4 easy yet sophisticated menus with recipes and hosting tips, so you can delight your guests without stress. Whether you're hosting for Rosh Hashanah, going to a tailgate, or just cooking a casual dinner at home, this episode helps you create a relaxed, festive vibe in your kitchen. 

By the end of this episode, you will learn how to:

1. Create stunning, low-effort appetizers that can be assembled in advance, and made almost entirely with store-bought ingredients. 

2. Choose a main course that will impress guests, like a seasonal salad that’s hearty enough to be a main, studded with fresh herbs and jewel-toned pomegranate seeds, or a delicious one-pot braised beef and aromatic rice dish 

3. Enjoy the comfort of make-ahead desserts, like Kari’s crowd-pleasing chocolate sheet cake that travels well, or the spiced cookies that Sonya makes that taste better the next day 

Don’t miss out on this essential fall hosting episode — press play now to make your next gathering unforgettable! 

***

Links to from this week’s show:

Menu #1

Yotam Ottolenghi’s fig, radicchio, and hazelnut salad for the Guardian

Sonya’s beef plov and plum frangipane babka 

Sonya’s honey sesame cake and one-bowl tzimmes cake

Menu #2

Baked brie by Ina Garten  

Ottolenghi’s quinoa and fennel salad for Bon Appetit

Pear slab pie with sour dried cherries from Martha Stewart Living

Menu #3

Sonya’s smoked fish platter

Colu Henry’s sheet pan roasted chicken with shallot and roasted grape for NYT Cooking

Sonya’s apple + walnut spiced cookies in her recent Substack

Menu #4

Classic cheese ball recipe from It Tastes Better From Scratch

Fried chicken from your favorite place

Texas Chocolate Cake from All Recipes

***

We love hearing from you — follow us on Instagram @foodfriendspod, or drop us a line at [email protected]! Or give us a CALL on our kitchen phone! 323-452-9084

Sign up for Sonya’s free Substack, or order her debut cookbook Braids for more Food Friends recipes!

Are you looking for an easy meatless meal that you can cook in 30 minutes or less?

In this bite-sized episode, we share delicious moments about the best things we ate this week to inspire each other – and you! 

You’ll want to make our favorite one-pot soy butter corn ramen that captures the sweetness of late summer, and a soba noodle dish that’s dressed with a surprise ingredient!

Tune in for a quick dose of home cooking inspiration!

***

Links to from this week’s show:

Soy-butter corn ramen by Hetty Lui McKinnon for the NY Times

Ottolenghi’s soba noodle and eggplant recipe via 101 Cookbooks – skip the dressing in the recipe and make a nutty peanut or tahini sauce instead. 

For an easy dressing, use this peanut sauce recipes but swap the peanut butter with tahini, and the chili sauce with gochujang, in this

***

We love hearing from you — follow us on Instagram @foodfriendspod, or drop us a line at [email protected]!

Or give us a CALL on our kitchen phone! 323-452-9084

Sign up for Sonya’s free Substack, or order her debut cookbook Braids for more Food Friends recipes!

frying, encourages you to freeze your tofu (who knew!), and describes several ways that silken tofu can be delicious in both savory and sweet dishes.

***

Links to recipes from this week’s show:

Sweet and Crunchy Tofu (made with potato starch) from Maangchi

(Frozen) Tofu Braised in Soy Sauce from Chichi Wang of Serious Eats, and How to freeze Tofu by Jessie Yuchen of Bon Appetit

Tofu Guide from Serious Eats

Silken Tofu with green onion from Garlic Delight

Vegan Mapo Tofu from David Tanis via the New York Times

Hetty McKinnon’s Creamy Vegan Tofu Noodles for the New York Times

Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ Tofu Balls and Tofu Short Ribs

Tofu Chocolate Mousse from Martha Stewart)

We love hearing from you — follow us on Instagram @foodfriendspod, or drop us a line at [email protected]!

After fifteen years of friendship and collaboration, we’re finally asking each other the question: how did you get your first job as a private chef? This conversation traces each of our own unique culinary paths back to their humble beginnings cooking in homes across Los Angeles. We have no idea what took us so long to have this conversation, but are excited to discover so many unexpected similarities, including one that might be as surprising to you as it is to us! We’re also sharing some of the dishes that our clients asked us to make again and again, which we’re STILL cooking for our families and friends. This conversation really shows us that no matter how long you’ve known a friend, there’s always more to discover.

***

Links to recipes from this week’s show:

Blueberry Pudding Cake from Gourmet Magazine

Nobu’s Miso-Marinated Black Cod via Kathryn Hill at TheKitchn 

Mark Bittman’s Vegetable Soup 

Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Mushroom Soup

Ruth Reichl’s memoirs: Tender at the Bone and Garlic and Sapphires

One of Tyler Florence’s Flourless Chocolate Cake  recipes

Sonya’s Turkey Chili! (yes, she sent it to Kari as promised :)

This week we’re exploring our favorite meatless meals that are flavorful, easy, and exciting. These veggie-centric dishes include several one-pot meals, a deconstructed lasagna, and the “casserole” we both can’t stop making. We’ll also share a few surprising ways to use up that cauliflower! While we’re both fans of starting our week with a vegetarian dinner, we also don’t have any hard and fast rules about what day or time it needs to happen. This conversation inspired us both to get back into the kitchen and cook up all our favorite vegetable mains!

***

Links to recipes from this week’s show:

Our favorite Farro + Cauliflower Parmesan, by Sarah Digregorio for The New York Times 

Bon Appetit’s Whole Eggplant Parmesan by Dawn Perry

Priya Krishna and Ritu Krishna’s Tomato Rice with Crispy Cheddar for The New York Times 

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Baked Rice via The Kitchn

Anna Thomas’ Love Soup cookbook, and her “beans + greens” recipe

Smitten Kitchen’s  Pizza Beans 

Heidi Swanson’s Baked Quinoa Patties 

Fly by Jing and Hot Mama Smoky Coffee Chili Oil 

Sonya’s Plov, while not meatless, you can modify it by omitting the meat or substituting it with your favorite vegetable or legume

From intimate dinners to huge potlucks, this week we reflect on our favorite dishes of 2022. These stand-out food moments made the cut, not because of their ingredients, but because of the special FOOD FRIENDS we shared them with and where we ate them. We are inspired by our friends’ beautiful cooking, insightful questions, and courageous projects that continue to expand the ways that we eat, cook, and talk about food.  

We’re so glad you’ve joined us here this year; we love sharing these conversations with you, and we appreciate all the feedback we’ve received from your reflections.  Thank you! We are going to take a break for a couple of weeks, and can’t wait to restart the conversation in 2023.  Happy holidays and happy new year!

***

Links to recipes from this week’s show:

Diane Yen’s “Self Care Carbonara” reel on IG inspired Kari

Simply Recipes’ Braised Leeks

Sonya’s Apple & Honey Ruffle Milk Pie recipe

@ramenasayswow’s Crinkle Cake

Our food friend and cookbook author, Shannon Sarna, reveals all the details of her holiday cookie boxes and shares the recipes she must include each year, as well as some of the cookies she makes sure to leave out. She has us drooling over her cranberry streusel bars made with homemade cranberry jam (YUM!), as well as her legendary rainbow cookies from her new cookbook, Modern Jewish Comfort Food. 

We are thrilled to share this conversation and hope it gets you in the baking mood as much as it does for both of us. Tune in to hear why baking cookie boxes can be more than the alchemy of butter, sugar, and sprinkles… this special holiday tradition can communicate love, connect us to our past, and bring joy to our community.

This week’s episode leaves us asking: how do we get on Shannon’s holiday cookie list next year?

***

Links to recipes from this week’s show:

Shannon’s new book Modern Jewish Comfort Food (it makes an amazing Hanukkah gift!)

Cranberry Crumble Bars from Baked From Scratch

Shannon’s favorite Whole Foods’ Chai Spiced Cookies, and Sonya’s favorite Chai Spiced Sugar Cookies

Shannon's Black & White Cookies on The Nosher

Kari’s favorite Spoon Cookies

Sue Li’s Orange, Pistachio, Chocolate Shortbread for the NY Times

Erik Kim’s Gojuchang Caramel Cookies for the NY Times

Chocolate Mint Crinkle Cookies From Tutti Dolci and

Classic Buckeyes!

“Classic Latkes & Country Ham” might not be an obvious holiday food pairing, but these two iconic dishes hold special places in our FOOD FRIENDShip.  

Sonya collected several key insights that led her to the latke of her dreams: crispy golden edges with a tender center. Surprisingly, one of those insights came from a catering experience with Kari, which helped Sonya to rethink the way she prepared latkes for a crowd. The conversation takes an unexpected turn to Christmas ham, a dish that has been shared for several generations by Kari’s family AND played a key part in Sonya’s life. 

The stories in this episode hint at several universal truths: crispy potatoes are good in any form, our friends are often our best teachers, and love can be expressed in many ways… even with a ham sandwich. 

****

Links to recipes from this week’s show:

Sonya’s daikon and potato latkes with ponzu dipping sauce

A ham “recipe” that’s similar to Kurt Lauritzen’s, aka Kari’s dad

Michael Solomonov’s potato leek latkes

Kari’s favorite recipe for cheesy potatoes from Jessica Merchant (it’s the closest to her mom’s version)

Our favorite shaved veggie salads from Food and Wine and the NYTimes

You too can order Linda’s Latkes!

The buttery, crunchy Chex mix Kari ate throughout her life is the traditional version that comes from the recipe found on the cereal box. Recently, Kari discovered an updated version of Chex mix that inspired us to talk all about our favorite party snacks, including muddy buddies and ranch fun dip! These snacks are equally fun at a party as they are in a lunchbox, or on a long car ride.

Along with talking about our favorite childhood treats, in this episode we embrace our pasts and respective backgrounds, finding a deeper love and respect for the memorable foods that we may have once taken for granted.

***

Links to recipes from this week’s show:

Furikake Chex Mix Snack from Hana Asbrink at Food 52 (It’s become our new favorite!)

Sohla El-Waylly’s Miso Party Mix

Classic Muddy Buddies! You can replace the peanut butter with tahini, or almond butter

Ranch Fun Dip from Sohla El-Waylly at Bon Appetit

French Onion Labne Dip from Romel Bruno at Food52