Chatting with Dorie [Greenspan]: Meet The *Sweetest* NYT Bestselling Cookbook Author
Dorie chats with me about her (latest) bestselling cookbook, how she once burned down a kitchen, her relationship with Julia Child, and our shared love of Paris!
I’ll admit it, I’m a fangirl.
More specifically, a Dorie Greenspan fangirl.
It’s not hard to see why.
Dorie is a New York Times bestselling cookbook author; she’s won five James Beard Awards, bakes like there’s no tomorrow, lives part-time in Paris (more on that later) and – above all – is as sweet as she looks.
Dorie Greenspan, Photo credit: Jennifer Livingston/Trunk Archive.
This summer, I obsessed over her dispatches from Paris on cheese and wine…
her recipe for gougères…
And her easy-peasy tricks for making the best tomato salad.
Get it? Well, last month, Dorie celebrated 30 years of “cookbookery” (a Julia Child term) with her latest book, Baking with Dorie.
A perfect reason to chat with her, don’t you think?
BAKING WITH DORIE (The Bestselling Book)
ALINA CHO: Baking with Dorie is your fourteenth book. Your third New York Times bestseller. Congratulations!
DORIE GREENSPAN: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
ALINA CHO: Are you always a little nervous when you launch a book?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Beyond nervous.
ALINA CHO: Yeah, I thought so.
DORIE GREENSPAN: You write a book, you're alone. I'm alone, I'm working in my kitchen. I'm creating recipes. I'm writing about the recipes.
Cheddar-Scallion Scones, Baking with Dorie
The collaboration really doesn't begin until after I've written the book, so it's such a solitary activity and then poof, you're out in the world.
ALINA CHO: Right, right, and it's scary and you want people to love it and you want people to buy it.
DORIE GREENSPAN: And I want people to use it, and I want them to bake from it.
Apricot and Pistachio-Olive Oil Cake, Baking with Dorie
Parfait-Layered Vacherin, Baking with Dorie
I want them to get their fingerprints all over the pages. I want them to share what they've made.
ALINA CHO: Just for the record, I already have fingerprints on the pages.
Father's Day Blueberry-Cherry Pie, Baking with Dorie
DORIE GREENSPAN: Yay!
ALINA CHO: So, the idea for this book was born on a family trip to Santa Barbara.
DORIE GREENSPAN: So, we were at the wedding of friends, and the morning of the wedding, I went off to get a cup of coffee and I had this scone with it, this really beautiful cheddar scone and took a picture of it, put it on Instagram as one does.
And I immediately got a message from a friend of mine, the author, Ann Mah. She said, "You should write a book about savory baking." I don't know. Do you get tingles when you get a good idea?
ALINA CHO: Of course.
DORIE GREENSPAN: I had decided I was not going to do another cookbook. My last book was the 13th, a baker's dozen. I thought that's a nice finish. But I got so excited, so I started the book as a savory baking book. And I kept saying, "Oh, I'll just do one little sweet recipe.” Before I knew it, the scale had tipped. While there's a savory chapter, it’s a primarily sweet baking book.
“I JUST LOVED BEING IN THE KITCHEN”
ALINA CHO: I want to talk a little bit about how you got into cooking. Neither your mother nor father really cooked.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Right.
ALINA CHO: You’ve said that you burned down your parents' kitchen when you were 12 years old, and do I have this right? Didn't cook again until you got married?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Well, it's slightly less dramatic in that I got married when I was 19.
ALINA CHO: Okay, okay. But tell me, how did you get your start?
DORIE GREENSPAN: I was in college when I got married. None of my friends were married. None of my friends had apartments. I had this idea that I wanted to be the place that people came to. We had a tiny apartment and a table that held six. I imagined six of us around the table, all the time eating, so I taught myself to cook. I learned from cookbooks. I learned from making terrible meals and sometimes good meals. I was a teenager at the time.
ALINA CHO: I know, but Dorie, there are people who learn and cook from cookbooks their whole lives and never start developing recipes, write cookbooks, win five James Beard Awards, and have New York Times bestsellers.
So, is it just curiosity? Did it start there?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Julia Child said,
"Find something that you're passionate about and stick with it."
I just loved being in the kitchen. It was my passion.
ALINA CHO: I do think that if you are lucky enough to be able to make a living doing your passion, what's better than that?
DORIE GREENSPAN: You said luck and I say it all the time. I feel like I was so lucky. Yes, I worked hard, but so many people work really, really hard. We all need a little spark of luck.
WORKING WITH JULIA CHILD
ALINA CHO: I want to talk about your friendship and your working relationship with Julia Child. How did you meet?
Dorie Greenspan with Julia Child
DORIE GREENSPAN: So, I was invited through a friend to do a baking demo at Boston University when my first book came out, Sweet Times, in 1991. This was my very first appearance as a cookbook author. It was the first time I had to speak in public and make something and Julia Child was there. I was on the bill with Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.
ALINA CHO: Oh, my God!
DORIE GREENSPAN: Julia came up after my demo. I'm really short. She was really tall, and she put her arm around me, and she said, "We're going to Rebecca's for dinner. I want you to sit with me," It was a table of four. I don't remember who else was there. [I was] sitting across from Julia, and she said to me, "Have you ever seen Dan Aykroyd doing his imitation of me?"
She said, "Oh, here's how it went,” and she stood up and did the entire…
ALINA CHO: … skit…
DORIE GREENSPAN: ... Saturday Night Live skit at the table.
ALINA CHO: That's hilarious.
DORIE GREENSPAN: We kept in touch. Julia was a great postcard writer, and we would write back and forth. [Then], I guess in ’95 or so, I went to work for the Food Network when it first launched.
ALINA CHO: Yes, I saw [that].
DORIE GREENSPAN: Geoffrey Drummond, who was a producer, who was a friend of mine, came to me and said, "Julia and I are going to do a baking series, and we want you to write the book. Will you?" I said no. I actually turned it down.
ALINA CHO: Why?
DORIE GREENSPAN: I said, "I'm in showbiz." I was probably more considerate than that, but in retrospect, I thought I was changing my career [to] television. About six months after I said no, I called them. I said, "Okay, who'd you get to write the book?" They said, "We haven't found anyone, yet." I said, "Sign me up,” and my life was changed.
ALINA CHO: Wow.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Yeah, so I got to work with Julia. We talked on the phone every morning for years, for years.
ALINA CHO: What was the name of that book?
DORIE GREENSPAN: Baking with Julia.
It was a 26-week PBS series. I wrote a big fat book that was launched when the series first aired, and it started our friendship.
ALINA CHO: I believe you two were on a walk [one day] and she [said]…
DORIE GREENSPAN: She said, "We're lucky." I looked up at her and thought, "I know why I'm lucky, but what are you talking about?" She said, "We're lucky because we work in food, and that means we'll never stop learning."
PART-TIME PARISIANS
ALINA CHO: One last thing I want to talk about is our shared love of Paris. When I was in college, I lived in the 6th arrondissement on the Left Bank, and you said, "Oh my gosh, that's my home."
DORIE GREENSPAN: That's my home.
ALINA CHO: You’re on Boulevard Saint-Germain. I have seen the post from your terrace with the view of the Eiffel Tower.
The view from Dorie Greenspan's Paris apartment
I mean, Dorie.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Dreamy, dreamy. I think we've been part-time Parisians for 22 or 23 years.
ALINA CHO: It's my dream.
DORIE GREENSPAN: It’s still dreamy. I still pinch myself. We get to Paris, and I can't believe that this is…
ALINA CHO: Your life.
DORIE GREENSPAN: My life, a very big part of my life.
ALINA CHO: I mean, talk about inspiring.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Talk about inspiring, being in the market, seeing what's there, talking to the vendors, hearing what people are saying about how they're going to cook things. I always ask people things, so if somebody is taking a celery root, for instance, I might say, "What are you going to do with it?" There’s always something that's going on, something that's popping, something to learn, something to see that's new.
ALINA CHO: I can tell you about every shop on Avenue Montaigne, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and maybe even Rue de Grenelle, but I have not tried some of the most iconic food spots, unfortunately, so we're a good team.
DORIE GREENSPAN: Okay. I love this. I love this. When we're in Paris and I'd like to think we will be, right? You can take me…
ALINA CHO: Shopping?
DORIE GREENSPAN: You can take me accessory shopping.
ALINA CHO: Okay, great.
DORIE GREENSPAN: And I'll walk you through bread, cheese, wine, pastry.
ALINA CHO: Amazing. It's a deal!