Food Predictions 2025: NYT's Kim Severson Speaks Out (original) (raw)

Christopher Kimball: This is Milk Street Radio from PRX, and I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. Today, we're kicking the year off with our predictions for the biggest food trends right now, from dirty sodas to buy beating plus we reveal the ingredient of the year.

Kim Severson: They have what they like to call a health halo, which I guess means, if you stand next to it, you'll be healthy.

CK: What we'll eat in 2025 that's coming up later in the show. But first, it's my interview with Nok Suntaranon, winner of the 2023 James Beard Award for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic. Nok, welcome to Milk Street.

Nok Suntaranon: Thank you so much for having me.

CK: I love the fact that you have very strong opinions about your food, and you don't let people run over you. You say, I love this. “Every so often, a customer will try to tell me about my food. They will say, this is not Thai food, or my favorite I have been to Thailand”. So, people's idea of Thai food, which I understand, is very different, depending on where you are in Thailand, is really not very informed most of the time, right?

NS: Yeah, I'm very opinionated. And it's not just about food. It's pretty much about everything in my life. I'm just like my mother. For Thai food you know, to tell you the truth, the food that I cook Southern Thai food. And my cousin, who we grew up together, cook, and she also cooked Southern Thai food, it's still different. So, when people told me that they've been to Thailand, they know Thai food very well. I I smile. Sometimes I roll my eyes, and I just like, you know, bless you. I just, I don't have anything else to say, because I've been traveling to America since 1991, I just been introduced to ambrosia salad last year. So, I would not dare to say that I know American food or any food very well, because food is very unique and individual.

CK: So, in high school, you went to Bangkok. You lived with your grandmother and uncle and her uncle in a boarding house, but you said your grandmother was pretty cool, right? She had cat eye sunglasses, and so was she sort of someone who opened up the world for you a little bit.

NS: She is, because my grandmother is a person who will go to the coffee shop in the market, drink coffee and sit and discuss the politic with all the men in the village. She read the newspaper; she listened to the news on the radio. And that's very unusual for the woman back at the old days in Thailand, will do that, especially in a small village like ours. So yeah, is very cool, very tough, and she is adventurous in terms of food. She always curious. Anytime she come home, she'll bring the new recipes that she wants to try, and she will cook it for us. Or sometimes she reads something from the newspaper, and she want to do it. She also, you know, very creative. She went after my grandfather died, she'd been making some snack to sell in the market, and all her snack is just super refined. It's nicely done. It's always a lot of work, and it's delicious. So, I grew up helping her, watching her work, watching all my woman at home. I mean, we saw our mother struggle a lot. But the most beautiful part that I never forget is we grew up with great food. The food always delicious, always inspiring. We’re always happy to talk about food.

CK: So, tell me about Southern Thai cuisine, let's define what it is, what the influences are, how it's different than some other parts of the country.

NS: So, what makes Southern Thai cuisine is different because southern part of Thailand is one of the most researched in terms of resource. We have ocean, we have mountain, we have everything. And we were the part of spice trade at the old day. We are the big melting pot of Thai, Malay, India, Indonesia, Chinese, Portuguese, oh, and also Pakistanis. So, we are very rich in culture. Because, you know, when you go to the market in my hometown in the morning, you see people wearing hijab. You saw in the fabric stores, Indian, the Chinese guys in the pork store roasting pork. And you see, you know the old lady that picking the vegetable and sit on the street selling it is from her home. So that's what you see in southern part of Thailand, our food is bright, is bold, is spicy and is have a lot of layers of flavors, and that's what make the food from certain part of Thailand is different.

CK: You talk in your book about making a lazy curry, and I just thought it was just a one of those little recipe ideas you could take with you and actually do at home pretty easily. So how do you make lazy curry?

NS: Okay, if I want to make lazy curry One night, I just going to prepare all the curry paste in advance. And the easier thing for me to do will be crab meat or fish or shrimp, because it doesn't take long to cook. You have that curry paste. You throw it into the pan, you pour coconut milk in, a little bit of shrimp paste, and then you know, you add the shrimp in, you add Thai basil in, you have the lazy curry. It's so fast, I would say it doesn't take more than 30 minutes from the start to finish, if you have the curry paste.

CK: So, let's talk about curry paste. So, you you talk a lot about red curry paste. Many others are there a couple people should have on hand and make it home and just keep around in the fridge.

NS: Yes, the curry paste that I would suggest that have on hand will be red curry, the Thai house curry and green curry. Most of the curry at Kalaya take about five hours at least to reduce, because we make things in the big batch. So, you know, I know that not so many of my reader will have five hours. But if you have 30 minutes, try it. Try it. The first time you make it, you will know if you need to reduce more if next time you need more time, and then you won't be lazy anymore, because you start enjoying the process of making curry. It's like when you go to the gym, you know, the first time I get on the treadmill 10 minutes, it's just like, oh my God, I want to kill myself, but then I go home next day, I feel like I can do 25 minutes.

CK: I think that story about the gym says a lot about you. The first day 10 minutes. The next day, you come back and do 25 minutes, as opposed to just not going back at all, which would be another, another option for the lazy group, yeah, maybe like me. So, if you say curry in India, you can spend six hours discussing what it means when you say curry in the Southern Thai context. What do you mean by curry?

NS: In Southern Thai context, it's the same. You could take hours discuss about this, but it starts from curry. We need to have a paste, right, and then either you want to make dry curry with a little bit of coconut milk or with coconut oil. Or you want to make curry, you know, a little saucy, and you can make it with water, or you can make with coconut milk. You want to make curry that have thicker sauce that you reduce coconut milk for like five hours. You want to make it even thicker by adding __ or coconut butter. So, curry is endless discussion. It is very fascinating. You know, for me, I been cooking curries since I moved to America, went to culinary school. I still feel like I have not learned enough about curries. Curry is part of life. It's an art form. It's a culture. And you know, for me, I would encourage you, know the reader, to start making curry paste and enjoy the journey. Make it your own recipes. Play with the ingredients, adjust it to your liking.

CK: Wait, wait, wait, except the first time, except Listen to me Follow, follow the bloody directions.

NS: Follow the directions.

CK: Come on. Is the notion of hospitality you think particularly a part of Southern Thai culture, or you think that's just something that is part of how you run a restaurant,

NS: No hospitality is part of Thai culture like you know, at home, we start cooking in the morning, and our food will stay on the table until toward the end of the day, because whoever come home, we invite them to sit at the table. Sometimes our neighbor will come and brought us something from the market. They go straight to the kitchen, get some rice and sit at the table and just eat. Even my mother or me not sitting at the table, anyone could come and eat at our table anytime. And it's the same thing with me going to my cousin’s house. Hospitality in southern part of Thailand is big. We are very generous people. We are the most friendly people. We are very high we are very giving until somebody cross us. So that's hospitality in the southern part of Thailand

CK: Wait a minute. Then what happens when somebody crosses you? Then what?

NS: That's TBD. I.

CK: It's not good. Whatever it is, it's not good. Like, don't mess with Nok okay. It's been, it's really been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

NS: Thank you.

CK: That was Nok Suntaranon, author of Kalaya's Southern Thai Kitchen. You can find her recipe for toasted beef [email protected]. Now it's time to answer your cooking questions with my co-host Sara Moulton. Sara is, of course, the star of Sara's Weeknight Meals on public television. Her latest book is Home Cooking 101, Sara, so we've survived another year barely, and so are you, if you've given up on resolutions in the new year. I mean, is that something you still do it?

Sara Moulton: It's something I still do. I mean, why not?

CK: Well, do you forget about it by Valentine's Day?

SM: I've certainly don't try the old let's lose some weight one that's useless, that doesn't go anywhere. So, I try to do ones that really will make me happy. Two that I have for this year cook out of cookbooks. Just take a cookbook and just start cooking my way through it to make recipes that are not mine, because left up to my own devices, I always reach for my French training, and it bores me, so I would like to do that. And the other thing is, cook everything in my pantry, because I have all these, you know, canned goods that have been there for a year. People gave them to me. I bought too many jars of this or that, and I want to start using and three cook with all the spices I have in there. Find recipes that use those spices and cook with them. There you go, and that way I'll have more fun cooking. How about your New Year's resolutions?

CK: Oh, I know what mine is. Mine is to spend Sunday afternoons cooking and being as inefficient as I possibly can be in the kitchen.

SM: Now, why that?

CK: Because I spend the rest of my life doing a million things. I love spending an afternoon where I'll take a one-hour recipe and turn into a three-hour recipe and I'm listening to some music. That's it. Inefficient cooking on Sundays.

SM: I love it.

CK: I love it. Yeah. All right, let’s take a call. Welcome to milk Street who's calling?

Caller: Hi. This is Dave from North Bend, Washington.

CK: How can we help you?

Caller: I'm calling because I had an issue with the banana bread recipe. I've gotten to the point where I make a good amount of bread. I've made this recipe a lot. Got maybe a little overconfident in my baking ability, and I decided to make a substitution, and it just went completely sideways. And I don't even understand why it went completely sideways,

CK: Like you substituted something else for bananas, for example.

Caller: No. So I've been making this recipe for a while. Okay, it calls for a teaspoon of baking soda. And I don't have any acid in this recipe, as far as I understand. So, I thought, well, what if I took the baking soda and swapped it out for baking powder, which I believe reacts to heat. And then I was kind of interested to see what that would do to the texture. And this thing turned out like it was a brick. It just nothing happened. It was super solid. It was like gelatinous, almost.

CK: Let me just comment on making substitutions. I once had a very old Mercedes, you know, it was a kind of a junk car. My oldest daughter at the time, I let her use it during the summer up in Vermont, and she went to fill it up, but it runs on diesel, and she put gasoline instead. So, she made a substitution of gasoline for diesel, which sounds about as disastrous as your banana bread recipe. So, I mean, look, I applaud you for your thought process, you said to yourself, you know, baking soda needs an acidic ingredient to create a chemical reaction. Baking powder has acid in it as well as baking soda, why not just use baking powder? I think the answer is, bananas do have acidity in them, and that's why you'd use baking soda. So, what most likely happened is you had insufficient leavener because the baking powder contains some baking soda, but it also has acids in it to react. So, you probably had half or a third as the leavening power of baking soda. Did you do anything else? Was there a new oven? Was there a new pan? Anything else change at all?

Caller: No, exactly the same. Just swapped out this one thing, and it just was so bad, it was amazing.

CK: Well, substitutes, it's fine, especially in cooking like top of the stove, but baking, especially with leavener, is dicey business. But you know, there is something odd here, though, I don't understand why it turned out like a brick. It really sounded like you had almost no leavening at all.

SM: Dave, is there any chance your baking powder is dead?

Caller: Oh, almost assuredly.

SM: What I mean.

CK: Well, thanks for telling us that.

SM: Now, wait a minute, how old is it?

Caller: I couldn't even tell you.

CK: Okay, there we go, Sara’s nailed it.

SM: Probably, yeah, yeah. You know how you can test your baking powder is you put like a teaspoon into a quarter cup of warm liquid, it should bubble up immediately. And the way you test soda, which you would guess, because you already know about the acid, is put like a teaspoon of soda into a quarter cup of vinegar, and it should bubble up immediately if it doesn't it’s past its prime

CK: The other way, you know, is in my family, my mother left me her baking powder and baking soda. So, if it's multi-generational, you just know,

SM: Dave, why did you start there?

CK: Yeah, that was like you had the answer before you called. Yes. There you go.

SM: Well, it's been fun talking to you anyway.

CK: Dave, a pleasure. Thank you for calling.

SM: Yes.

Caller: All right, take care. Thank you both.

CK: Bye. This is Milk Street Radio. If you need a hand with dinner, give us a call anytime. 855-426-9843. 855-426-9843 or email us at questions at milkstreetradio.com

SM: Welcome to Milk Street who's calling?

Caller: Brianna from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

SM: Well, hello. How can we help you?

Caller: I am just needing some advice on how to make a solid roux. My biggest issue is that when I put in the milk, it starts to curdle on me. And then I'm just also wondering if you could maybe give me some ideas of just, I don't know, good cheeses to use in it, or some, you know, specific flour, or some milk to use in it as well.

SM: I'm interested by that word, curdle. What do you mean exactly?

Caller: After I melt the butter and the flour, I add in the milk, and it gets super thick. It almost like turns into a ball of dough

SM: It’s the ratio of flour to milk is the problem if you're trying to make a gravy, for example, let's say you're trying to make a gravy for a roast turkey. For every cup of liquid, you want about one and a half to two tablespoons of flour for a medium consistency. And you want the same amount by volume of butter. So, let's say we're going to go with four tablespoons of butter and a quarter cup of flour, four tablespoons of flour. So, you melt the butter, you add the flour, you cook it over medium heat, medium low heat, you know, whisking it until they always say, till it looks like sand, but, you know,

CK: Or say until you can't smell the flour

SM: Right. That's good. So, we're going to add now two cups of milk, I would heat. Start whisking it in slowly but whisk constantly. It should be smooth. Keep whisking over medium, bring it up to a boil, turn it down to a simmer, and cook it for at least a minute for every tablespoon of flour you have in there, and preferably a little longer to get rid of the raw flour taste. But it won't reach its full thickening capacity until you bring it to a boil. It was slightly under a boil. It really sounds to me just like you had way too much flour for the amount of milk that you had. I have had no problem thickening skim milk, 1% 2% whole milk. It's not the milk, it's the ratio I think that you had.

CK: Well, can I ask? So, first of all, the ratios that Sara mentioned, the way I think about it is just it's 123, so if a cup of milk, you can use one tablespoon each of butter and flour two or three. For a thinner one, it's one each for a medium, which is what Sara just talked about, it's two tablespoons of butter and flour per cup, and then it's three as thick. But I don't understand the curdling. So, when did it happen? And when you say curdled, what exactly do you mean?

Caller: I might be using the wrong term, but basically what I meant is that it almost becomes a dough, like ball once I add in that milk,

CK: It's not curdled, it's just so what were your ratios of flour, butter and milk?

Caller: So, this is what happened. I started off, and I was using an equal ratio of butter and flour, and then I added the milk, and then I think I just kept adding flour, because it wasn't getting as thick as I wanted it, okay, and then that happened

CK: All right. gotcha. That was the gotcha moment. Sara's right, you just added too much flour, and so it wasn't curdling, it was just overly thickening. And what are you going to use the bechamel for usually?

Caller: Well, I have been trying to make like a beer cheese dip for football, or just like a good like Alfredo sauce.

SM: Oh, you also asked about good cheeses, right

CK: So, yeah, you might use two tablespoons of butter, two tablespoons flour per cup of milk. Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, Sara explained it three or four-minutes whisking, and then it'll get thick after that time

SM: Yeah, probably why you was confused is because it doesn't get thick until it reaches that almost reaches the boiling point. Yeah, yeah. But any good melting cheese, you know? And there's so many of them.

Caller: Okay, this sounds like an easy fix.

SM: Thank you

CK: I'm glad that somebody's still making roux that's nice.

SM: No, me too. Yeah,

CK: Take care.

SM: Yes.

Caller: All right, thank you guys.

SM: Thanks. Brianna,

Caller: Bye,

SM: Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling?

Caller: Hi. This is Aaron. I'm in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

SM: Hi, Aaron. How can we help you?

Caller: Well, I've been trying to find a recipe for beef tongue. I recall getting it as a young person at the Wurst house in Cambridge, and a tongue sandwich was delicious. It was sort of like a corned beef, maybe a spicy corned beef, and I haven't been able to achieve anything close to that. I've tried soup eating, I've tried various recipes. I think the problem is that the only way to get the skin off is to cook it, and once it's cooked, you really can't season it very effectively. So, I wondered if there was another way of doing it that I haven't hit upon.

SM: You're just finding it too bland. Is that it?

Caller: Yeah, and it also comes out very tough. And actually, when I did the sous vide, it came out nice and tender. But then I made the mistake of taking the advice of the recipe and searing it, which turned it to rubber so

SM: Interesting.

Caller: Yeah, and I actually smoked one recently, and that was probably the best one I've done so far. And again, the problem is that in order to get the skin off, this recipe called for simmering it for a few hours to get the skin off, and once that's done, you really don't get the flavor of the smoking into the meat, because it's already partially cooked.

SM: My main experience with it, I have to be honest, I haven't cooked a lot of tongue, but I worked at this very fancy restaurant in New York, and the owner cooked tongue, beef tongue regularly, and she would make, you know, a broth with aromatics, you know, vegetables, and she'd throw in some pickling spice, and she'd simmer it forever, and then when it was really, really tender, she would slice it on a meat slicer paper thin, you know, like you get it a deli roast beef or something, and then fasten your seat belt. She made a foie gras mousse. She had a mold made for it so there'd be a piece of tongue, then she put a foie gras mousse and another layer tongue, blah, blah, blah. And I think it was probably bland, but you didn't know, because the mousse was so wonderful, but the combo of the two was great. I imagine when you had at the Wurst house, it had all sorts of mustard, maybe pickles and maybe capers and lots of lemons.

CK: Well, let's ask, did the tongue itself have flavor at the Wurst House?

Caller: I believe so. And it was sliced really thin. It was sort of like a corned beef pastrami sort of thing, kind of a cured meat flavor.

CK: One thing you can do is you can do it like I would do with shellfish on the grill. So, once they're cooked, throw them into a pan with stock and flavors and other things. And the same thing you do with tongue, you could slice it and then also let it sit when it's still warm in essentially a marinade for a half an hour, so I think flavoring after it's cooked is really the way to do it, because you're never going to get flavor through that skin

Caller: Yeah, right.

SM: Soy sauce is a good idea, too.

CK: Soy, I think, would actually go really nicely.

Caller: It would penetrate yeah

SM: Aaron, unless you want to do a foie gras mousse and with butter in it and layer in, no, it really was yummy.

CK: I bet it was.

Caller: I believe it, yeah, I'm sure it was. I will give some of these ideas a try. Thank you.

SM: Thanks. Also, please let us know how it goes. Reach back out. Okay,

Caller: Alright. Thank you.

SM: Bye.

Caller: Bye bye

CK: This is Milk Street Radio, if you're looking for something a bit special to cook or bake, we have a complete collection of all of our favorite recipes at milk Street radio.com/best, recipes coming up next it's our food predictions for the year ahead. This is Milk Street Radio. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball, I'm joined now by New York Times food correspondent Kim Severson to discuss her predictions for what we'll be eating in 2025. Kim, welcome back to Milk Street.

Kim Severson: Always a pleasure. Mr. Kimball,

CK: It's time for you to talk about what's coming up in the next year. You always do these lists, you know, of food trends, and I let me guess we're going to break the rules again, right?

KS: Yeah, it's always that high, low, rule breaking little luxuries. I you know, I've been doing this list for so long, and I try to explain to people, there are real differences between a fad and a trend, right? So, you know, whatever the mac and cheese viral, curly noodle dishes this year that everybody got excited about, or, you know, pink sauce, whatever those, those are little fads. But trends are things that really seem to cross more food stuffs and demographics. They tend to reflect how we're feeling a little bit, although every once in a while I like to throw in like, you know, fruit of the year, my prediction for fruit of the year. And if you were wondering, Chris, what I'm calling fruit of the year for 2025 (yeah) put your money on guava.

CK: Oh, yeah, well, I would agree with that. I was in Costa Rica years ago, and there was a lot of guavas, right? I fell in love with it, actually, but you were talking about breaking the rules. I think one of the things you've talked about is coffee, make coconut lime creamer for dirty sodas,

KS: Right, right

CK: I actually got that phrase out without laughing. First of all, what's a dirty soda? And why, in the Lord's name would anybody put coffee mate, coconut lime creamer in it?

KS: Well, dirty sodas are kind of the thing. It's it's a little bit of a reflection of the beverage culture that Starbucks has gotten us into, and you know, there are these soda shops, particularly in Utah, where they're not going to be drinking a lot of alcohol. You can drive through and get various mixes of syrups and sodas and flavors, and if you put cream in one of them, they're called a dirty soda. So, it's a thing. Last year, the flavored waters were very, very big, and we're just in this beverage thing. But I think the bigger thing is this notion that Gen Z has this kind of brat ethos where any kind of unexpected flavor combination or product mashup is cool, like, you know, Nashville hot chicken and Bauer, you know, pickles fried and cheese, salsa matcha lattes. There are all kinds of things that this generation wants to eat and explore, and rules really don't matter. In fact, it's almost cool to break the rules a little bit.

CK: Okay, so flavored Ranch, huh? Is that new?

KS: This is part of a larger trend you're going to be seeing in 2025 which I called it for guava. I'm calling this the year of the sauce. So, sauces are really big, and some of them are, you know, sort of more low brow, like pickle flavored ranch dressing. But increasingly, you're seeing a lot of sauces that are maybe a little bit more up the culinary scale, you know, ___ Verde, or even places that are putting, you know, whiskey and ketchup, or, I think there's a Georgian condiment called ajica that's getting popular.

CK: Yeah, I get the hot sauce thing, obviously, but I don't, I mean, I guess ranch dressing, isn't it like overtaken ketchup or something. It's been this huge success story.

KS: Yeah, you cannot escape ranch dressing. You really can't. It's actually second in popularity only to mayonnaise in the really grand American sauce repertoire. Yeah, people are nuts for ranch.

CK: What is the thing that is the common ingredient in all ranch dressing?

KS: I think it technically it started as a buttermilk and herb sort of dressing. So, I think there's a creaminess that people like, without the tang or challenge of other flavors. And then there's a some sort of a slight chemical herb thing that people really seem to like. I can't quite put my finger on it.

CK: Ah, it's the chemicals that always make a great ranch dressing.

KS: Well, you know, Chris, it's like, it's like French onion soup mix. You know, if you're going to make French onion dip, if you try to make it from scratch, never quite as good as it is from the packet. And if you put a bowl of a homemade version and the packet version down and a bag of potato chips, the version with the Lipton soup mix is going to go faster, I promise you, every time.

CK: Well, I'm not a moral, this is not moral outrage on my part, I'd be perfectly happy to take a processed food that's really good.

KS: Okay, okay, I just want to be clear that we're not, yeah,

CK: I’m not that highbrow. Okay, coffee. I was hoping that would not be any new trends in coffee, because I've kind of had it, but you're telling me that yet, there's another coffee culture just around the corner,

KS: Right, and you know, we've been through first wave coffee, which I guess was the antecedents to Starbucks, and there was second wave coffee, I guess we're in third wave coffee, but the coffee is getting more specific, certainly. And Yemeni coffee is going to be big. Yemen was, what they think is the first place to cultivate coffee for commercial distribution and kind of the heart of the coffee trade. And so, there are these new kinds of Yemeni style coffee shops. So, they have snacks, sort of light desserts, and they stay late. They're sort of like a dessert bar.

CK: So, let me guess, is this really popular in Brooklyn?

KS: I don't know. I think Brooklyn's not the edge of hipness anymore. It may or may not be, I don't know, but I feel like I saw a baseball cap with Brooklyn on it the other day, and I thought that's the shark jump.

CK: That's that's the that's the end of the trend. Brooklyn is no longer cool. So, convenience foods from Asia. I mean, if you go into a 711 like in Japan and Tokyo, the convenience stuff is just amazing. So, is it a particular style that's coming, or particular country or culture?

KS: Well, you know, 711 culture in particularly in Japan, is a big thing. And so, there are going to be an increasing number of seven elevens here that have what they call konbini, you know, little sandwiches and onigiri is obviously a big thing. There's a little bit of a playoff of the popularity of H Mart. I think Asian grocery stores are getting very, very popular these days. So, I think you're going to see a lot more of the elevated gas station food, but it's going to look very Japanese and a little bit Korean.

CK: Yeah, I went into a 711 in Tokyo years ago, and, you know, I think Tony Bourdain raved about their egg salad sandwiches. In the range of stuff they have some of its quite good. And I always wondered why no one ever did that here. Because you think it would be perfect. And I guess the answer is they are. Chickpeas are back. I mean, is that haven't they already been back?

KS: I feel like chickpeas, chickpeas and mushrooms are two things that end up on the list often. You know, I pour through dozens and dozens of trend prediction lists, you cannot believe the amount the end of the year food trend list industry is very healthy Chris. And one thing that's always on these lists seems to be mushrooms and then occasionally, as you point out, chickpeas, but people are saying chickpea fries, Panisse, that they're high in protein, gluten free. They have what they like to call a health halo, which I guess means, if you stand next to it, you'll be healthy. I'm not sure, but chickpeas made a lot of lists, but I think you're right. Chickpeas are cyclical. I think big chickpea could be behind this.

CK: Big Chickpea. So, you also write that we're moving into a minimalist vibe, and this is after we've been talking about dirty sodas, which are hardly minimalist. So, I guess you're saying that the population of America has many trends, some of which are total opposites, right,

KS: Right, although you have to think about maximalism in the American diet in a more extreme way than maybe a dirty soda. I don't know if you recall a few years ago, there were shops in New York where they would put a slice of cake on top of a milkshake, right? And that was the thing. And everything had, like a bump of caviar on it, or you had, you know, giant seafood towers and drinks that were, you know, that come to your table under a glass cloche, and you'd pull it off and smoke would come out. So, there was a lot of theater. I think, when we came out of the pandemic, people wanted a lot of theater, in their dining they wanted to feel alive again and with people. So, food and dishes and drinks got very, very elaborate. So that's kind of the maximalism moment. And now people, I think, are into more something that emphasizes purity, quality, simple seafood bars, classic cocktails, dishes, just highlighting one ingredient. Because, you know, America is a big country, and as we just learned in our election, a very divided country. And there can be two things existing at the same time in America, and I think you're seeing that in food trends certainly,

CK: I don't think as Americans are very good holding two opposite ideas in our heads at the same time.

KS: Well, I didn't say we like it, but

CK: We got to do it.

KS: But Chris see, the thing that I'm excited about is kind of vibe eating, you know, sort of cooling, heating, chocolate and cayenne, things that either elevate your mood or mellow you out just kind of a vibe, you know, if you're nostalgic, you could have, like vanilla cola flavors citrus would make you happy. So, I want you to think about vibe eating this year, Chris

CK: I think I just like to take a time machine back to 1961 you know, Kennedy was president.

KS: There were no dirty lime coconut drinks then Chris, there's no vibe eating

CK: Rooh Afza. What is Rooh Afza?

KS: This is kind of a floral syrup from Pakistan. People talk about it as a soul regenerator, and it's a thirst quencher. It's put into drinks into the hot summer months. Somebody said it was the Maggie of of drinks. So, people go crazy for it. It's maybe a little bit of an acquired taste. Some people say it's kind of a little heavy on rose for them, but it's a floral syrup. It's Pakistanian, although there are also versions from India and some other parts of Southeast Asia. But look for Pakistani Rooh Afza and start to make some drinks with it, particularly in the summer, I think you'll be right on trend.

CK: Do you ever go back and go like, you know, I look at my list from last year, were there some real surprises in the past when you've looked at your older predictions?

KS: Well, I occasionally, I've I've missed it completely on vegetables. People thought were going to be big, or things like yuzu, that certainly is everywhere, but I'm not sure it took America by storm. I do better, I think, on the kind of cultural trends and the and the way certain foods were eating reflect how we're eating.

CK: There was one we talked about a year or two ago, which was self-serve supermarkets. That is, there were no employees. You just go in and buy what you want and then did that. I know the checkouts in the supermarkets are popular

KS: Yeah, Chris, thank you so much for bringing up another prediction that didn't come true. But, you know, I do think that checking out your own groceries. I think that that's going to fade. I hear people at the grocery store being like, I'm not getting paid for this. Why is the supermarket industry making me do their work? You know, so there's, I think there's a little bit of a pushback on the self-checking of groceries.

CK: Well, I remember checking out in my local market, and there was like eight people standing in line to do the self-serve, and there were like, three or four manned checkouts, two of which were empty, (right). And I went to there was a woman kind of overseeing the self-serve. And I said, Why are why are people standing in line to check out themselves when they could just go have someone do it, and there's no wait. And she said, because people don't want other people touching their food, (huh?) And I'm just going like, you know how much your food's been touched by the time it gets to the supermarket?

KS: I wonder if that's a holdout from that. Do you remember when we were wiping our groceries down? I will give you one more big fail that I particularly feel was a miscarriage of justice, and that is the fried chicken skin. So, there were, you know, crispy chicken skins as a base for nachos this was a few years ago, you know, rising chicken prices had chefs looking for ways to get more from the birds. So, they were looking for, you know, using the chicken skin. People thought it was going to be like the most promising thing, again, maybe big chicken, but that crunchy protein I got, I thought crispy chicken skins were going to be something dyed like a grape on the vine my friend.

CK: You had a hard job, you know? You got to stick your neck out there. It's like predicting the World Series or the Super Bowl a year ahead of time, right? Yeah, it's a losing proposition.

KS: Right and then there's people you know, like you, who'll always be around to remind me of my swings and my misses.

CK: I'm always in favor of your list at the time you give it to me, but I do have an historical perspective.

KS: Thank God for that, Chris. Thank God. I mean, without history, what are we?

CK: A food writer doesn't know her history is destined to repeat it. Kim Severson, another brilliant list, and next year we'll check in with a new list, but this year we'll just give you a report card on the 2025, projections. Kim, thank you.

KS: Thanks a lot. It's been great.

CK: That was Kim Severson, food correspondent at the New York Times. Some predictions about our future have been spot on. Flying cars do exist. FaceTime has made video chats a reality. And robots are constantly replacing humans in factories. But most predictions are still fantasy. Robots don't cut our hair. Whales are not used for transportation. Frogmen don't live in undersea bunkers tending to kelp farms. And firefighters don't fly around using bat wings. But I'm still waiting for smell o vision and a good square tomato, as we were promised back in the 1960s is that really too much to ask? You're listening to Milk Street Radio coming up Adam Gopnik on what happens when we quit the foods we love.

Hi. I'm Christopher Kimball, and this is Milk Street Radio. I'm joined now by JM Hirsch to talk about this week's recipe, bread dumplings in broth. JM, how are you?

JM Hirsch: I'm doing great.

CK: You know, I was in Austria recently visiting my wife's family. And of course, they do Knödel dumplings. They have them for dessert. They have them for everything. And I was just reminded how easy they are to make and how good they are. But you mentioned to me an Italian dumpling that I hadn't heard of, and you made some comment in passing that it saved the city. So, tell me that story. I didn't really know the Italians made bread dumplings. I thought it was more Eastern European or German, but I guess they do.

JMH: Yeah, you know. So, I cannot speak to the veracity of this story, but it's so romantic, it won me over. So I was in Trento, which is a small town in the very northern parts of Italy. I was at a restaurant called Antica Trattoria Al Volt and their signature dish is called camederli inbrodo, which translates roughly as bread dumplings in broth. Not a great sales pitch, frankly, but the owner of the restaurant, Gianni Tomasi, told me that these camederli were created right around World War One, when a bunch of German soldiers trumped down from the Alps, went to the first farm they found and demanded that the woman at the farm feed them. Well, the poor lady apparently didn't have much on hand, certainly not to feed an invading army, and all she could do was pull together some bread, some eggs, bits of meat, some cheese. Well, she turned those into what we would actually probably call a meatball, more than a dumpling, and simmered them in broth. Well, apparently it worked, because the soldiers were so smitten with these, they did not destroy her village, which they had threatened to do if she didn't feed them. And that's it.

CK: I would say. I would say that's a bit of a stretch.

JMH: I would have to agree, especially since we know this recipe, or variations of this recipe, can be found across the region,

CK: and probably for 100 years before

JMH: Exactly, exactly, nonetheless, they are delicious and surprisingly light, because you know when you tell me that you're going to make a dumpling, but essentially a meatball out of stale bread, a bunch of eggs, a bunch of cheese, a bunch of meat, they love to use Speck, which is a cured pork, but also mortadella, and then simmer them in broth. I mean, that sounds so heavy to me, but they're not. And that's what made these so special. When I took my first bite, I was like, wow, these are so light and yet so rich and clean and simple. And one of the things, as you've said, you know, we know that this recipe can be found across the region, but one of the things that really set it apart for me, from, say, similar dumplings, was, you know, kind of the reliance on classic Italian flavors. I mean, you have Parmesan. I mean, you're in northern Italy, you’ve got to have parmesan and the mortadella. I mean, those are classic Italian flavors that really, really permeate this dish. And then, of course, you've got a classic Italian broth, lots of rosemary going on in there. It's wonderful and light and completely different than what I expected.

CK: Well, it's interesting that that whole area does dumplings, except here in the States, you know, our dumplings are sort of chicken and dumplings, they tend to be doughy, kind of, sod, yes, they're not light and bright and made essentially with a leftover bread, which is one of the other reasons I love this recipe. JM, thank you. Bread dumplings in broth. Simple light and it's got to be one of the top 20 recipes everyone needs in their repertoire. Thank you.

JMH: Thank you. You can get the recipe for bread dumplings in broth at milk, street radio.com, you.

CK: I'm Christopher Kimball, and you're listening to milk Street Radio. Now it's time to check in with our friend. Adam Gopnik. Adam, how are you?

Adam Gopnik: Well, Chris, it's January, isn't it, and January is the time when everybody gives up or tries to give up something that's essential to them, and I have had to cut back on my sugar radically recently, as happens to all middle aged folks, I suppose, I got a blood test report from the doctor saying your blood sugar is worryingly high, and I find it easier. I don't know if you find this to be the case, Chris, I find that abstinence is easier for me than moderation. I can stop drinking wine for a couple of dry weeks. I have a much harder time having half a glass at night, and so understanding that about my own psychology, I went cold turkey on sugar immediately after getting this news, no sugar in my coffee, no dessert for dinner. Now there are some people

CK: Wait, wait, you're not going to start to lecture me about the benefits of giving up sugar are you

AG: No, on the contrary, I'm going to ask you to participate with me in the melancholy of having to give up sugar.

CK: So your sadness came from a lack of energy because you weren't consuming sugar, was your metabolism running slower?

AG: It may have been partly a slower metabolism, but it was also kind of sadness that always comes upon us I think when some delicious thing is eliminated from our lives, because the palette of pleasure suddenly seems so much narrower. I once found myself, and I will confess this, Chris openly weeping in our bedroom for a bit of ice cream. It seemed to me that human beings have a right to ice cream. It seems to me that ice cream is one of those things that should not be an indulgence. If it should not be a staple, it should at least be a constant possibility. And having ice cream eliminated as a possibility reduced me to tears.

CK: Well, I have to say, of all people I know, if you were denied something that you would turn philosophical.

AG: I would, and I did. You saw it coming down Sixth Avenue. And I should explain to you, Chris, I have been eating sugar literally every morning and night of my conscious life, my mom was a great dessert cook. She made pies and tarts every night. Her specialty was a Grand Marnier souffle. And I truly, without exaggeration, have had a dessert every night of my life since I was two or three years old. So much so that my wonderful daughter, Olivia, used to come upon me in the kitchen with the light off after midnight, eating just a bit of ice cream with a tiny little spoon, because I somehow had that theory that if I ate it with a tiny little spoon, it was less of a sin no about that. And Olivia developed a whole theory of what she called dad's little spoon esthetic. If he's eating it with a little spoon, it doesn't count. And so, when I made that decision three months ago to cut out sugar completely, it was a huge experiment, not just in nutrition. It was an experiment, if you like, in psychology, how much of myself was made by the things I ingested, and particularly by sugar, and at one level, would you I discovered what we all discover when we have to give up something that we thought was essential to us, which is that we can give it up. It's generally true right across the board in my experience, things that we think are essential to our existence turn out to be secondary to our ongoing existence, but when we deprive ourselves, in a weird sense, Chris, we lose ourselves. We're not lesser than we were before, but we're different than we were before. We do feel better. We lose weight, and I think we feel a salutary pride in our power of restraining. One great English dandy once said, all that character is is the capacity to refrain. And any time we show ourselves that we have the capacity to refrain, we feel in some way that our character has improved, but oh, oh, how we miss the other self we had, and what we miss is not its festivity but its normality. When I stepped back briefly, just for my birthday or for an occasion into the sugar world and I actually had a bit of ice cream or rice pudding, what struck me overwhelmingly was not that it made me high, but that it made me feel normal again. And I think that that, more than anything else, is what the additives we love do for us. They make us feel normal because they're part of our creation of our own normality.

CK: Well, I have a similar but different take, which is, I think being abstemious is not a natural state for us as as humans. And so, you're always in a suspended state between periods of whatever it is you're not supposed to be doing, because you think eventually this will end, and therefore, when you get back to it, that is your is like your natural resting state in physics, right?

AG: Yeah, that's exactly what a natural resting state puts it very well. That's what I mean by normality. That's what feels like nothing is affecting us when we analyze it, or when we have to withdraw from it, we recognize it isn't a fixed resting state. It's an invented state, but the illusion of normality is one that we miss terribly when it's gone.

CK: I only have one question, which is, do you still have that little spoon? Because I don't think you threw that out. I think that's still sitting in the kitchen somewhere.

AG: It sits in its drawer. I look at it wistfully and woefully from time to time, but even my daughter says Dad has transcended the little spoon esthetic.

CK: Adam, my great condolences, but I admire your iron will.

AG: My character is improving, even as my stomach is saddened.

CK: Thank you so much.

AG Thank you.

CK: That was Adam Gopnik, staff writer at The New Yorker. His latest book is The Real Work on the Mystery of Mastery. That's it for this week's show. Please don't forget you can hear more than 300 episodes of Milk Street Radio at our website. That's Milk Street radio.com or wherever you get your podcast. To find out more about us, go to 177milkstreet.com there you can become a member and get 1000s of recipes. Access our online cooking classes and get free shipping on all orders from the Milk Street store. Plus, we have a complete collection of all of our favorite recipes at Milk Street radio.com/best recipes. Please check us out on Facebook at Christopher Kimball's Milk Street on Instagram at 177 Milk Street. We'll be back next week, and thanks, as always, for listening.

Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio is produced by Milk Street in association with GBH co-founder Melissa Baldino, executive producer Annie Sensabaugh, senior editor Melissa Allison, senior producer Sarah Clapp, Associate producer Caroline Davis with production help from Debby Paddock. Additional editing by Sidney Lewis, audio mixing by Jay Allison and Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts. Theme music by Toubab Krewe, additional music by George Brandl Egloff, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio is distributed by PRX.