Preppy Kitchen | John Kanell
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.
John Kanell: Hey, I'm John Kanell, my cookbook Preppy Kitchen: Recipes for Seasonal Dishes and Simple Pleasures, is out today.
Suzy Chase: John Kanell, you didn't set out to be the guy who makes beautiful dinners and portrait-ready desserts for millions of people on Instagram and YouTube, nor did you think you'd be making Reese Witherspoon's birthday cake. And it never occurred to you that you might find yourself raising a flock of Nigerian dwarf goats on the grounds of your Connecticut farmhouse with your husband Brian and your twin boys. And here's the kicker, just seven years ago you were a middle school math and science teacher. Talk a little bit about the life you were living, versus the life you wanted to have.
John Kanell: I love education. I love teaching. And my mother is actually the person who inspired me to become a teacher. So we'll talk about her later. But basically she retired. She got her doctoral degree in education. And I learned a lot of things from her, some in the kitchen and some out. And one of those was just to love learning, to love the process, and to really savor all these moments of growth. So after I graduated from UCLA with an art degree, I became a middle school math and science teacher, and I loved it. There's such a connection you have at that magical middle school age, where the kids are just making these exponential leaps, and you're part of it. And you can really make a difference in their life.
And I love being a teacher. However, years later when I met my husband Brian and we were planning on having a family, he had a very intense job where he had to work a lot and I had all his time off, but it's very structured. And we're thinking, we want to have kids, but who's going to be home for the kids? So we were just talking about how our family would work, what we would want this family to be. And Brian told me, you love teaching, but you also love food and you don't really do a lot of that in your teaching job. So maybe you can pivot and combine these two loves to create something that would allow you to work from home. So that was the impetus for Preppy Kitchen. It was just wanting to do two things I love and also spend time with these kids to be.
Suzy Chase: So you have a super successful blog and an Instagram with over a million followers, and a YouTube channel with over 3 million followers, all called Preppy Kitchen. So tell me about Preppy Kitchen, and why did you choose that particular name?
John Kanell: This actually goes back to my math teaching days. I was a math teacher. I also worked in an educational therapy office specializing in math. And I worked with a lot of kids who had big challenges. They were so young, but they'd experienced failure in a profound way for them. So they thought they couldn't do it, and they were crushed on the inside. And it was heartbreaking. It was a really memorable moment for me when I saw these kids that were so young and just really internalizing doom on a subject like math or science. And what I learned as an educator was how to take something big, and insurmountable, and challenging, and break it down into components that are achievable and doable, that build competencies. And once you built these up and people have experienced success, they realize, wait a second, I can do this.
When I started talking about food with people, I realized the same thing applied to them, where they're thinking, "I could cook a dinner, I can't bake." Or "I'm a baker, but I can't cook." Or "I can't do anything, I'm going to order everything out." And I'm like, "No, no, no. You can do it. The only thing you need to do is be prepared." So Preppy Kitchen is a play on words, because in preparing people for the task of making, it could be a banquet, it could be a simple lunch, I'm going to give you the tools you need to have success, and have fun in the kitchen too. So that's really the ethos of the channel and everything we do, where I'm here to help you have fun in the kitchen to make delicious dishes to share with your family and friends.
Suzy Chase: Speaking of internalizing doom, you have such a soothing Ina Garten delivery in your videos. It's so fantastic for home cooks like me who get stressed out in the kitchen. Have you always been so at ease in the kitchen?
John Kanell: I really have. I have not always been at ease on the camera. If you go back to my first videos, you'll see me just screaming on the inside. Because I never wanted to be on camera or to have... I'm actually a very shy person in many ways. But my mom, who's this wonderful person, I'm so excited to see her in a week and change. Because we're going to be in Los Angeles for the book tour. So we're going to stay at her house, and have some delicious home cooked meals, and make things together. But she is from Mexico, and she brought with her a love of fresh ingredients and making things from scratch, and building flavors together. And I always say that she explored the world in her kitchen. So she voraciously consumed all these cookbooks, and recipes, and learned how to make them, learned how to meld things together.
And it was such a pleasure for her to learn these things and then to share them with her family. So in addition to being very well fed as a child, I was there in the kitchen learning from her, and was soaking it all in. So I've always had fun in the kitchen, even if I fail. And I have failed many times and done things that just go left. But one thing I like to do, especially in a video, is to include that and say, "Oh, this kind of exploded, but let's bring it back and use the meal." Because it doesn't always go right. But that doesn't mean that you have to be down on yourself, or not have a good time in the kitchen. Because you can still make it delicious.
Suzy Chase: You say you're a mom-taught chef. I love that saying. And your mom fascinates me. Because she was raised in a small village in Mexico, where she made tortillas every morning. And you call her an intuitive cook.
John Kanell: I want her to write a book, and to have a petition signed for my mom to tell her story. But she had to make food every morning. She grew up in a very small village. And she left because her dad wouldn't let her go to school basically. She wanted to learn so badly, but just because of the way things were, her father said, "Nope, that's not for you." And she left. She just ran away and decided to forge your own path, which is insanely courageous to me. And eventually after having my brother and I, she put herself through night school to get a high school diploma, and went to community college, and then went to Loyola Marymount, and got her bachelor's, and master's, and eventually her educational doctoral degree from USF. So she made her dream happen. It was very difficult for her, but it was so important that she made sure that it was something that she could do.
And that's really what inspired me to become a teacher and to love food. When she came to this country, she didn't speak any English and she taught herself from a dictionary. So she was just a fish out of water. Everything was a new experience without a cultural context. And when she was in the kitchen and picking up these cookbooks, and my father's mother, who was a wonderful cook as well, shared a lot of books with her and recipes. And she was just exploring various cultures for the first time, various techniques, and spreading her wings. So it's amazing seeing someone like that in the kitchen, and I'm sure we all have relatives like this, or maybe you're like this, where you can just throw things into a bowl and it magically becomes a cake or a dish.
Suzy Chase: No. No.
John Kanell: She never measures things, just with her hand. But I'm trying to replicate a recipe for myself, and I'm trying to get these measurements. She's like, oh, well, it's like a pinch or whatever. And I'm like, okay. Well, let me just do some recipe testing and see if I can replicate it.
Suzy Chase: I'm so in awe of people who can cook like that.
John Kanell: That is a gift. But it's also kind of... She fails too. So even though she's wonderful, things don't always turn out perfectly. But it's always a learning experience. And I don't know, you can't be bold and not expect things to fall flat every once in a while. So one of the things I want to share with people in the kitchen is just to try it out. Because even if it turns out horribly, and I've made some horrible meals too, it is such a learning... And failure, we learn the most. So you'll learn, I will never char something that way, or I will always do... I'm always going to par boil my peaches before I try and peel them, because that was a nightmare. And it's so tangible, because it was a hands on experience.
Suzy Chase: So you record all of your videos in your gorgeous kitchen at Hedge Hill Farm in Litchfield County. So how did you end up there?
John Kanell: Well, Brian and I spent some time in New York and discovered Litchfield County through a friend who had moved from Los Angeles to there because her husband was from there. And we came here, and we're like, "Oh my gosh, this is beautiful." This is such an idyllic place where there's just so much history. It was so beautiful. It has a rural nature to it. There's intact farming areas where you still have real working farms. And we thought, "You know what? One day we'll move here."
The kids were getting older. We were back in LA. And even though we had a nice life in Los Angeles, there were a lot of things we didn't like. We didn't like sitting in traffic all day. We didn't like being away. Brian especially didn't like being away from the kids while he was at work. And we wanted the kids, and ourselves to have more of a connection to food, and growing it, and nature, and open green spaces. And push came to shove and we just decided that tomorrow could be today. And we moved out, and it was a very big leap of faith to come, but it really worked out. And the kids love it, and we love it. And I'll still go and visit Los Angeles or New York, and they're wonderful places. But I'm so happy where I am
Suzy Chase: In the cookbook you arrange the recipes by seasons. What should we be making right now? It's October, and the temperature is dropping.
John Kanell: I just made a clove bread. It's a nice rich dough, labored with cloves, and it's braided. So you have a layer of a frangipane, and then a homemade cranberry compote and some apple butter. And then the bread is braided over that. And it is such a wonderful way to start the morning. It's a little bit of icing on top, so it's just perfectly sweet. And I've been making that one, as well as a [inaudible 00:10:36]. It's a cinnamon roll basically, without the frosting, and it's constructed in a different way. A lot of times they have chocolate inside. This one has more of a Chai flavor. So there's, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, old ground pepper as well. And it's all topped off with a nice cinnamon honey right out of the oven. It's lovely.
Summer's over, winter's coming, and it's time to get cozy, and have just more of a warm, comforting, spicy nature to the food. So I love all those false spices coming together. This morning I actually had a chive and Parmesan buttermilk biscuit with my eggs. And that's one the recipes from the book. I made it for some videos yesterday, and it's lovely.
Suzy Chase: Well, it's also apple season, and you have a Swedish Apple Cake recipe on page 85. And in the head note you talk about how your parents were always reading and learning. History books line the shelves of your living room, and there were just as many cookbooks in the kitchen. Talk a little bit about how your mom loved to immerse herself in other cultures, and how this recipe came about.
John Kanell: So I was very lucky in that my father loved books, and loved history. So I'm not kidding when I said we had thousands of history books. They were lining shelves all over the house, in the garage. And my mom had not as many, but quite a few cookbooks. And they were really just points of exploration for her. She loved finding out how people in different places ate. My dad's family is Greek and French Canadian, and she loved learning Greek cuisine, and loved learning French cuisine. And this recipe was one that she started making, I think, in the seventies. And it was a holiday favorite of ours.
I love light flavors. And I suppose I don't have a sweet tooth, I have a cream tooth. So I love creamy things. I love light, delicate flavors. My favorite fruit is a persimmon. It's almost like an apple, but it tastes like custard. So this cake is a Swedish apple cake, and poached apples. And they're not baked in a traditional cake batter. It's a meringue filled with ground almond. And it has a lovely cloudy texture. It's just perfectly sweet. And I love having it with a big dollop of whipped cream, or a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Suzy Chase: So you not only have recipes in this cookbook, you also have special projects. What are those?
John Kanell: The cookbook's arranged by the seasons. And part of that is not just the recipes that we enjoy, it's things that we do. So in the winter we do love making [inaudible 00:13:03] and decorating our barns and the house with them. And in the summer we have an abundance of produce. We have a large kitchen garden that the boys help us tend. And it is throwing up so many tomatoes, and carrots, and peppers and everything else, that you just can't consume them all, and you can't give them all away either. So what can you do? You can pickle them, and save them, and have these little jewel-like jars in your kitchen reminding you in the winter that summer's coming and you can still have a taste of it. So there's projects like that. Or even things like making browned butter. I love browned butter, I'm sure you do too.
Suzy Chase: I do, on popcorn.
John Kanell: Yeah, everything. Literally nothing tastes bad with a browned butter on it. So that's one of the projects, how to make brown butter, just talking about the different levels of caramelization you can get from those milk solids. And it's a project that we use in other recipes. And in the summer, one of the memories I have as a child is pressing wild flowers and finding them in these books that were in my parents' library. And I wanted to have that as a special project in the book. And we'd use those wildflower pressings to make shortbread cookies that have pressed flowers on top. And I'll say they're edible wildflowers. So pick those pansies and violas.
Suzy Chase: So here's the million dollar question. How many gingham shirts do you have?
John Kanell: Oh my gosh. If we were on a video call today, you'd see that I'm wearing a brand new gingham shirt my husband bought me as one of my birthday presents. This one's a flannel one. So it's nice and cozy since we're in fall. I would say more than a dozen, but I honestly haven't counted. So there's a large gingham section in my closet. I'm here to be a walking picnic table for you.
Suzy Chase: So last weekend I made your recipe for Vanilla Bean and Fresh Fig Cake on page 81. What is the story behind this recipe? And can you please describe it?
John Kanell: Sure. I have a love of figs that goes all the way back to my childhood when we had a massive fig tree in our backyard. And I loved it for all different kinds of things. And figs have a very pungent, when they're ripe, a beautiful deep flavor. And I wanted to pair that with a nice vanilla cake. And did you like the frosting for it?
Suzy Chase: Yes. Well, I'm like you. I like creamy, creamy. And I love vanilla. So the vanilla frosting was incredible.
John Kanell: So it's a sour cream buttercream. I think that contrast of the tang with the delicate vanilla really highlights just the bounty of the fresh fig. And of course you have a lovely pound cake style cake that goes with it. So you're having these bites of cake, and a sour cream frosting, and these figs. And all together it's not too sweet. I feel like they're just delicious, lovely bites
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called, my favorite herb or spice, where you tell us what favorite herb or spice you use the most in your kitchen, and why?
John Kanell: I'm going to say it's seasonally. We just came off of summer, and my basil and terragon were going like gangbusters. So I was having that in so many things. We had really great tomatoes. And for breakfast I was having some freshly baked sourdough bread, lovely butter, soft scrambled eggs, basil and heirloom tomatoes. And that was my perfect summer breakfast. For spices, I think that cinnamon is by quantity my most used spice. We're in fall right now. But the spice that has my heart, I think is cardamom, or all spice. Those are the top two for me. And I think both of them don't get enough ado in the kitchen.
Suzy Chase: So where can we find you on the web and social media?
John Kanell: Across all channels you can look at Preppy Kitchen. And the website's preppykitchen.com. And you can find my book at Amazon or Barnes Noble. Or if you want to support independent book sellers, which I love doing, I love my independent bookstores, you could find it at those places or at bookshop.org, which is an online place that works with independent stores.
Suzy Chase: Thank you for inspiring home cooks everywhere. And thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
John Kanell: Suzy, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. And I hope I can speak with you again soon.
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