365: A Year of Everyday Cooking & Baking | Meike Peters
365: A Year of Everyday Cooking & Baking
By Meike Peters
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York city, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.
Meike Peters: My name is Meike Peters. I live in Berlin and my latest book is 365: A Year of Everyday Cooking and Baking.
Suzy Chase: This cookbook has solved the age-old question, what shall we cook tonight with a recipe for every day of the year. All of this started with your blog, Eat In My Kitchen, in 2013 where you shared one dish every day for a year. Tell us about that.
Meike Peters: So one day I decided I'd like to find out a little bit more about blogs. At that point I didn't know anything about blogs and seeing that I love cooking, I love writing, I love photography, my boyfriend at one point just said, "Why did you don't you just start a blog?" I had been working in the music industry for 15 years and I felt ready for a change. So I decided, okay, I'm going to share one recipe every day on my blog, Eat In My Kitchen, and really I had no experience. I didn't know anything about it, so I really just jumped into it.
Meike Peters: I thought it can't be that difficult. We cook every day or I cook every day anyway, so I might as well just share the recipes. It turned out to be a bit more time-consuming than thought because it's one thing to cook, but it's something totally different to take a picture, to write about it. All of this took relieve much, much longer. So in the beginning we, we always ate cold food because we had-
Suzy Chase: Okay, I get that.
Meike Peters: So I changed a few things. Then I decided, okay, the recipes I share on my blog, I have to cook a little bit earlier. I also shoot just with daylight. I just had to adjust my cooking, my shopping, my timing a little bit. But in the end it was an amazing experience that led to two cookbooks already.
Suzy Chase: You say the kitchen isn't a place where we have to perform. If we're a home cook who doesn't love love love to cook, how do we take the pressure off and unwind in the kitchen?
Meike Peters: I think we shouldn't go into the kitchen with any expectations. I mean obviously we all want to eat good food, but it's kind of like with everything. If we put pressure on us, we will never perform as well. If we just see it as an experimental space where we can try out new things where we are totally free of any expectations. We just do what you feel like. We give our best and hopefully it will taste good. If it doesn't taste good we just tried another time. I think that's the most important thing. And then I think food is something it should be just enjoyment. It's nothing where we have to prove something to other people. So there's no need to choose complicated recipes, for example. That means we might have to spend more time in the kitchen than we actually have or it might stress us out.
Meike Peters: For me, that is not what cooking and food is about. It should make us feel happy. It should relax us. It is something that we share with other people and the people around us want us to be happy as well. They don't want us to cook something super complicated that might taste amazing, but we are totally exhausted after we've done it. So I think it has a lot to do with just winding it down. Maybe sometimes cooking something that's a bit more simple, adjusting it to our mood and also to our schedule. If we have a very, very busy day, we can just go for a more simple recipe and just looking at what do I actually feel like, and then take it from there.
Suzy Chase: I do like how simple and quick these recipes are in the cookbook. Talk about your approach in developing a recipe for every single day of the year.
Meike Peters: So first of all, I believe in good produce. That's always a starting point. When you have good vegetables, tasty fruit, you don't actually have to do much with carrot, with a zucchini, with an eggplant. You don't have to do much with it. But it's super important that the quality's actually good and therefore we have to stick to the seasons. Ideally we go for produce that comes from the area where we live. So that is always my starting point. And then sometimes I feel like experimenting and adding maybe one or two different flavors, playing with spices or herb or just for example, adding fruits to a savory dish. That was something that I started to enjoy a lot in the last few years that I just combined things sometimes that are maybe it's not the first combination that comes to mind, but it adds a bit of excitement.
Meike Peters: I mean we all love a bowl of warm pasta sometimes just with olive oil and Parmesan. And sometimes we just feel like something that excites the taste buds a bit more and that is a bit more something new. So very often it starts that I just go to the market and I see a vegetable, for example. And then all of a sudden, ideas come up what I can do with it. Where it exactly comes from, I can't really say. I think sometimes I think it's a bit like a composer who can't explain to you where a song or where the lyrics come from. Ideally, they're just there and it's good. Luckily with food comes quite naturally to me. It's just when I'm in the right mood it just comes.
Meike Peters: And then I have certain ideas in my head and I try them out. But it's something that comes very intuitively. I think maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that I've been kind of cooking all my life. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with my mother. Being surrounded by food all the time, by people who play around with ingredients, it just inspires me very intuitively.
Suzy Chase: So you're German and you grew up in Germany, but what is your connection to Malta?
Meike Peters: My boyfriend is half American, half Maltese. He lived most of his life in Malta and we got together 14 years ago. When we are in Malta, we live with his family and that gives you a very deep insight into the culture. I always say when you are a part of a Maltese family and when you visit them, it's like a wave. It sucks you in. It just spits you out again when you leave the country. So it's a very, very intense experience. We spend a lot of time there. We live with this family.
Suzy Chase: You live in the same house?
Meike Peters: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: Wow. Is it big?
Meike Peters: It's a big house, but he has three siblings. Family lives very close by. You do a lot with the family. It can easily happen that you go to a restaurant with a family three times a week. Two times a week you would go to the beach with them. It's a lot about family. But I'm lucky he has a beautiful family, many women. There are a lot of women in his family and we always have a good time. We all love to eat well. It is a different kind of family concept in the Mediterranean to Germany, for example. It is very close. There's a lot of love that is shared and shown really. Love is shared very openly. And I was welcomed.
Meike Peters: It still overwhelms me sometimes how much they made me a part of this family. But this really gave me the chance to have a very, very deep insight into this culture that is so different to what I grew up in. I mean I'm quite German and it influenced so much of me. My humor changed totally. My cooking obviously was influenced. But I think I also slowed down down my pace a little bit, so it had a big effect on me as a person.
Suzy Chase: Talk about how Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays call for different recipes.
Meike Peters: There is something I experienced a little more through the blog even, that we all have certain desires, long for different recipes during the week. What I noticed very often that everybody hates or often people hate Mondays. But I really thought that, man, that poor day of the week. It deserves a bit more and the easiest way to create a bit of happiness is obviously food. And I thought, yeah, let's just create a dish that you can easily prepare after a stressful day of work on a Monday, but that gives me this feeling of like a bit of dolce vita. So pasta is the best example. You just throw together a simple but nice pasta dish and maybe it wakes up some holiday memories.
Meike Peters: It just creates something special. You have a glass of wine with it maybe. An exciting salad during the week that is super easy to prepare, but it has a lot of color, it has a lot of flavor, and it excites us. Or on Wednesdays, for example, on the blog I introduced a series many years ago, which was called the Sandwich Wednesday and people love that. It's just, okay, on a Wednesday I make a very special sandwich creation. I tried to include this rhythm that I experienced on the blog. I tried to follow that also in this book.
Meike Peters: So these are all very simple things that are easy to plan, but that can add a bit of excitement or relaxation to our weekly rhythm. And again, it can also take this pressure off cooking and replace it with, wow, I actually have something nice to look forward to in the evening. I'm going to prepare something that tastes good. That looks nice, that it is fun to prepare.
Suzy Chase: 365 is dedicated to the investigative Maltese journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia. Tell us about her.
Meike Peters: So three years ago when my last book came out, Eat In My Kitchen, I was interviewed by Daphne in Malta because Daphne was a political journalist, but she also had her own food magazine. So she interviewed me for her magazine and we clicked immediately. It was strange because people had kind of warned me almost of her. I think people were scared of her. When I met her I was so surprised. There was this woman that was so soft, almost shy and sweet. She was the warmest person. It was totally different to what I expected, and we stayed in touch. We often exchanged emails about our culinary work.
Meike Peters: Then in 2017, she dug a bit too deep in the dirt of some people and she was assassinated. That hit me extremely hard because never before in my life someone was killed in my environment. Never before had I imagined that this could happen in Malta. I think I still need some time to find my way to deal with it. Also too, it really defined my relationship with Malta. it really changed a lot. When it happened, shortly after that I decided to work on a new cookbook. Somehow Daphne was on my mind the whole time while I was working on this book, on 365. When it came to the question, who am I going to dedicate this book to? For me, it was obvious that I would dedicate it to her because somehow it is deeply connected to her. She loved food so much. She was a woman that was very close to my heart and who's not here any more.
Suzy Chase: I could see why people were scared of her because she investigated several high profile figures, including the prime minister and other Maltese officials and politicians and they planted a bomb under the seat of our car. It's like the Mafia. I read that three men are facing trial for the killing, but the people who ordered it have not been identified.
Meike Peters: The whole family is trying very hard. People outside Malta and also a few people in Malta, they try very hard to push the case and to find the people behind, but it seems like that at the moment there is still a lot of people who don't want the truth to come out. But I believe that the truth always comes out at one point. Maybe I want to hope that this will happen here as well. But it's a very, very, very hard time. For example, there isn't even an official memorial at the moment. There is opposite the court in Valletta, Valletta is marked as capital. There is a place where people put down flowers and letters and pictures for Daphne every day.
Meike Peters: So it became of a place to remember her, to remember Daphne. This place is being cleared every day. There are always people who take the flowers and everything away. This is just very painful to see, for the family especially. I really hope that at one point, maybe the pressure from the outside has to become stronger, that the truth comes out.
Suzy Chase: Well, I think there's a little hope now because I read a recent BBC article that said Malta is finally going to hold an inquiry and they've enlisted a retired forensics expert.
Meike Peters: We have to see what all of this will lead to, what people say, what they're going to do, and how much they actually allow to come out. I'm not sure.
Suzy Chase: Well, we'll be watching. So back to the cookbook.
Meike Peters: Yes.
Suzy Chase: Last week I made these recipes, roasted grapes with Burrata and prosciutto on page 228. This dish impressed by husband. Can you describe it?
Meike Peters: I just thought, okay, I love the combination of cheese and fruit. So it was basically, okay, I have the nice Burrata. What can I add? There were the grapes. It's possible that I just saw a plate of grapes in front of me and I thought, "I might as well roast them." The flavors become a bit more concentrated. It becomes a bit more candy-like even, and then the roasted rosemary adds a bit of a woody note. That is basically how I often come up then with these recipes. It's just these two, three, four elements in my head and it's like at one point they find together and it makes sense. This dish, it can be a beautiful starter for dinner party or in summer this can ... You just have a nice loaf of bread and a bottle of wine and that's dinner.
Meike Peters: I love it when these flavors, a few, just not many, a few flavors come together and they make sense together. You have this also visually really beautiful dish that doesn't take very long to prepare it. These roasted grapes also taste good, so you can just prepare a bigger bunch and you can also add them on top of polenta. That's also very, very nice. We had that at the book launch. There's one recipe where I add them on bruschetta with a bit of Stilton. So that's also a good way to take the pressure out of daily cooking. You just prepare bigger portions of something and then you use it for different dishes. Or on top of soup, the roasted grapes are also great on top of a hearty parsnip, pumpkin, or potato soup. So you can really play with these elements and use it for different recipes.
Suzy Chase: I also made your mashed sweet potatoes with coriander on page 228. I mean those were so easy and delicious.
Meike Peters: It's funny. We're going to make that tonight. I just bought the sweet potato for this.
Suzy Chase: It's Friday.
Meike Peters: It's Friday, exactly. You can have it on its own. You can add, of course, a German fried sausage to it. We love that sometimes. These kind of mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, it's a technique that ... Technique, you can't really call it a technique. But it's a kind of recipe that my mother makes very often because traditionally mashed potatoes in Germany are made with milk and butter. One day my mother made mashed potatoes with olive oil and she just chopped up the potatoes very roughly. And then I decided, okay, it might be nice to add a bit of lemon zest or some fennel seeds or coriander seeds and instead of having the normal yellow potatoes, I just used sweet potatoes.
Meike Peters: I think cooking is when you go through the world with open eyes. There are always people around you who prepare something that you might have not thought of before or they just use it in a different way, and then you just play with it a bit.
Suzy Chase: So the last thing I made was from page 230, and that was your recipe for Trout al Cartoccio. Is that how you pronounce it?
Meike Peters: Cartoccio, al Cartoccio.
Suzy Chase: Cartoccio, with artichokes, parsley, and juniper berries. Talk about how trout has a lot of character.
Meike Peters: Trout is, because they live in lakes and they have a very, or in rivers, and they have a very earthy taste. It's not like seafood, fish that lives in the Mediterranean. It can even be a bit sweet sometimes. It's very fresh. It's totally different to the fish that I grew up with because I grew up in the countryside. So for me, fish was very much fish that lives in rivers and lakes. Seeing that it has this earthy taste, it can really deal with other flavors, with strong flavors very, very well. Very often when I buy trout, I just see, hey, what do I have in the fridge? What do I have in the pantry? And then one day there were artichokes, olives, parsley, and then I just felt like I'm going to throw that together and it tasted really, really good. It's a fish that can deal very well with a lot of flavors.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment this season called My Favorite Cookbook. Aside from this cookbook, what is your all-time favorite cookbook and why?
Meike Peters: This book is not really one of these pretty cookbooks where it's about pictures. The pictures that are in there are really very practical pictures. You see how the dish is going to look, but it's not about, wow, is this a mouth-watering picture? It a different kind of cookbook where it was really just about having good recipes. The techniques in this book, all the recipes are very precise, the way the meat is cooked, the way the vegetables are cooked. It's all very precise. It all works out. It's not very experimental, but it's really the basic. When you understand this, then you can play with it and add your own things to it. But this book is it combines all that I love.
Suzy Chase: What's it called?
Meike Peters: This is How South Tyrol Cooks. The German title is, and I think there's just because in this region, in this area, they speak German and Italian. This is How South Tyrol Cooks and the three authors are called Heinrich Gasteiger, Gerhard Wieser, and Helmut Bachmann.
Suzy Chase: Well, thank you so much for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Meike Peters: Thank you very, very much for having me.
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