Dick Stein

Given today's rampant hoarding of hot dog buns, I thought it only prudent to try making my own. King Arthur Flour's Chicago-style bun recipe, pictured above and linked below, yielded Best of Show results.

While our flour supplies hold out, Nancy Leson and I are using our shelter in place time to bake. We've aired lots of baking shows over the years. Here are some of our favorite recipes from those shows.

Though sit-down service is banned for now, many area eateries are doing what they can to keep staff employed.  In this week's Food for Thought, Nancy Leson tells what they're doing to cope with the times.

Nancy Leson and I are beating the 6-foot social distancing rule by many miles for the CoviDuration by recording via broadcast-quality phone line. I'm alone in our Tacoma studios and she's in her bedroom closet in Edmonds. “The quietest space in the house," she says. "So we won't be interrupted by sirens, doorbells and dog barks."

In this week's Food for Thought, Nancy names the stuff she's trying to keep on hand to stave off culinary boredom and shares a good suggestion from one of our favorite cookbook authors on how to support local farmers and freeze produce at home.

This story originally aired Jan. 17, 2018.

"Stein, some women spend money on shoes and jewelry.  I buy pots."  And Nancy Leson has the cookware to prove it.

This story originally aired March 7, 2018.  

In this week’s Food for Thought, Nancy Leson and I dredged up our earliest memories of food.  Nancy recalls wolfing an entire stick of butter.  I tell how years later I learned what my grandmother’s “special” soup was really made of.

All that plus shopping for live chickens, Nancy’s lima bean phobia, wax flakes in the milk and collapsing straws in this week’s Early Food Memories show. 

I wouldn’t say I’ve always hated my broiler. Only when I have to use it. 

Which is why I dread the recipe that ends with "Finish under the broiler."

Nancy Leson’s raving about Fuschia Dunlop’s update to her classic cookbook “Land of Plenty.” “I’ve been cooking a lot out of 'Food of Sichuan.'"

In honor of Black History Month, we are taking a look into the career highlights of African American artists and their contribution to the world of jazz and blues.

Dick Stein tells the story of an impromptu performance critique by piano master Jaki Byard for a hopeless – and hapless – would be clarinetist.

Even I’m surprised that a mayo maniac like me never bothered to make it myself. But after years of reading how the commercial version was such a pale, pathetic shadow of the homemade, I thought I’d give it a shot.

Especially since the recipe I found claimed it was not only foolproof, but could be made in two minutes.

Some people get the cold shoulder. Nancy Leson got the whole shoulder. A complete right shoulder replacement. Now she has to convalesce. Bad enough she’s not allowed her customary daily half-hour on the speed bag. The real bummer is that, for the next month, she’s forbidden to cook!

I checked in with Ms. Leson to see how she’s holding up during her month in the No Cook Zone.

Nancy Leson asked me how the horseradish got its name.  It's not because of its resemblance to a certain part of a horse.  And it's not because horses like to eat it – the stuff's actually poisonous to them.  The "horse" in horseradish is just an antique adjective describing anything large or strong.  For my taste, the stronger the better.

I didn’t want to do this topic.

When Nancy Leson suggested we talk about making fresh pasta I scoffed “Nahhh. Nobody wants to make fresh pasta, and even if you do want some you can just buy it at the store.”

Her reply, in the form of a link to a YouTube video convinced me to make some fresh pasta myself.

Nancy Leson and I both love sausages of all kinds.  We keep them on hand for quickie weeknight meals and for some recipes better suited to a weekend cooking project.

We agree that it's better to buy sausage in links than loose. If you need the sausage loose, you can always have the fun of squeezing it out of the casing like meat toothpaste.

The buzzards circling over the restaurant gave me pause, but we went in anyway. I figured we were all in search of the same thing, namely dead meat, so I looked at them as a kind of endorsement. Like seeing a line of semis parked outside.

In a moment of hubris, I ordered a Wretched Excess burger. You know the kind: six inches high and packed with extras. A burger that if you tried to pick up and eat the usual way would dislocate your jaw.  "DeGroot," I told my wife. "I've gotta Aunt Pat this thing."

At the end of this encore segment I brag to Nancy about my intention to bake a giant Cheez-it -- and made good!  Here's a link to the story about a Cheez-It the size of an LP cover.

A man and woman meet in a bar and get along perfectly — same sense of humor, same favorite authors and movies, food, music; they're a perfect match.  Naturally, they wind up at her place that very night.  There on the living room floor he sees a dead horse.

"My God," he exclaims. "A dead horse!"

"Well," she shrugs, "I never said I was neat."

"All the chefs think they know how to season your meal," complains Nancy Leson about the disappearance of salt and pepper shakers from restaurant tabletops. 

That's never bothered me.  Mainly because I think the chefs do know how to season my meal.  But for those who want it saltier, Nance has the solution: Bring your own.   

That and other restaurant-going tips and tricks, dos and don'ts in this week's Food for Thought.

My holiday gift list is limited to just one. Every year I present the Lovely & Talented Cheryl DeGroot with the same fabulous 110-piece socket set (American and metric!) in its handsome presentation case. I love the way she completely hides her excitement when she unwraps it. She’ll return it the next day, but I know it’s only so she can have the fun of getting another next year.

Here are some gift suggestions from Nance and me for the cooks on your list who already have socket sets.

When someone asks me "Do you like a challenge, Dick?" I start looking around for the exits. So what was I thinking when I tried to make Stella Parks' "Impossible" pecan pie pie – a baking project even its creator warns against attempting. The recipe was originally in the draft for her BraveTart pastry cookbook, but the editors thought it too difficult for inclusion.

Parks famously refuses to publish the recipe. She doesn't want to deal with the desperate questions and moans of anguish from those who foolishly try it. If you want her Impossible Pecan Pie recipe, you have to ask her for it and she'll send it but you're on your your own. 

I did, she did, and I was.  

Nancy Leson recently got to interview one of our favorite cookbook authors, Molly Stevens at Seattle's The Book Larder.  Our copies of her previous books, "All About Braising" and "All About Roasting" are splattered with grease and gravy stains.  Can there be higher praise for any cookbook?

In this week's Food for Thought, Nance and I talk about the recipes we've made from Molly's new book and some of the great tips she offers – including the best way to crack an egg. Hint: Not on the edge of a bowl.

This story originally aired Nov. 10, 2018.

It's getting to be soup season, and both Nancy Leson and I have our favorites.  In this week's Food for Thought, Nance and I trade favorites from childhood, our go-to's at restaurants, and the homemade must-haves.

Sometimes my mind has a mind of its own. Especially when I purchase a kitchen gadget that I know I can't really justify but just...want. Nancy's the same. 

Even so, sometimes going against our better judgment turns out to have been pretty good judgment after all. In this week's Food for Thought we offer our personal examples.

I claim that the number one job of a Thanksgiving roll is to soak up gravy.  "And butter," Nancy Leson added.  

Here are our two favorite roll recipes.  Both have the virtue of being started the night before, giving already harried TG cooks a head start on Turkey Day.  

It was the Big Uh-Oh. An inch of lemon poppy seed sludge was left in the bottom of the KitchenAid mixer bowl when I poured out my cake batter. Could the gap between the bottom of the paddle and the bottom of the bowl be out of adjustment? 

It was easy to find out and all it took was one thin dime.

Julia Collin Davison needed to get a feel for Northwest food resources. And who better to give the host of PBS's popular America's Test Kitchen the tour than our own Nancy Leson.

In this week's installment of Food for Thought, Nancy Leson and I explore the delights of dunking with not a donut or basketball in sight. Instead, we break out the dunkage on cookies, whiskey, sandwiches, saltines and soup.

"The nicest thing happened last Thursday," I told Nancy Leson. It was Broadway Farmers Market day, happening right outside the door of our new Tacoma studios.

And what a nice surprise a market shopper gave to me that morning.

Just back from Philly, Nancy Leson says that easterners are more likely to chat up people they don't know,  especially in restaurants and in supermarkets. "Strangers just come up to you and talk.  Or I come up to strangers and talk. About anything. About what you're ordering, how to make it."

Nance says this happens all the time back east but not so much in Seattle. Does she think this is the much bemoaned Seattle Freeze?

"What was I thinking?"  The question's not just for past relationships. In this week's Food for Thought, Nancy Leson and I share tales of some of the questionable gizmos we've bought over the years.

I'm a guy who appreciates the virtues, however imaginary, of the quick fix.  And what could be more emblematic of the QF than duct tape?  Surely there's something analogous in cooking.  When I asked Nancy Leson what she thought that might be, she posed the question on her Facebook page. 

Back by popular demand:  Nancy's favorite easiest pasta sauce from 2016

There's nothing I like better than spending a whole day or two working a complicated recipe.  I'm a little nuts that way.  But just as games with the simplest rules often have the most depth, sometimes the simplest recipes yield the the most flavor.

Nancy Leson's candidate comes from cookbook author Marcella Hazan.  Nance says it's "reputedly the world's simplest, most delicious sauce.  I really could not get over the complexity of flavor out of just three ingredients."