Season 1, episode 9: growing up in a food family

Transcript

Conner: (00:08)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Michael: (00:18)
My parents love to cook. Both my mother and my father. I don't know why I feel I have to say this, but my father is super well known for this beef soup that he makes. My nieces and nephews absolutely love it. My mother is so good at everything Italian, but so good at just everything. Baking and cooking and things like homemade pasta. There wasn't a night when I was growing up that we didn't have a meat, a vegetable and a starch on the table, and a lot of that was just made from scratch by my mom and so you're in that environment and you just kind of soak it all up and so, my sister, my brother and I are all really great in the kitchen as well.

Stephanie: (00:59)
Michael Volpatt is a co-owner of the Big Bottom Market in Guerneville, California. With his business partner, he ventured into hospitality from the world of public relations, and while it sounds like a hard turn from PR, Michael was actually sort of preconditioned for a career in food. He grew up in a food family.

Stephanie: (01:23)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and today, we're going to talk about what happens when your major influencers, mom and dad, are people who love to cook.

Stephanie: (01:46)
The Big Bottom Market is a gourmet deli and marketplace that opened more than seven years ago. The market quickly became well known for its biscuits, so popular, in fact, that their biscuit mix made it onto Oprah's list of favorite things in 2016. Michael's cookbook called Biscuit was published in April of last year. When I first spoke with Michael, his family and upbringing intrigued me right away. So right now, we're going to pick up on our conversation with him describing a time in his childhood, going to elementary school with his punch card for school lunch.

Michael: (02:19)
I did that for a few times and I just would always go back to my mom and say, "I just want you to make lunch." I would pull out my lunch and it would be this little box and it would have leftover homemade pasta and a meatball in it. The other kids had fruit roll-ups and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and here I am, eating homemade pasta and meatball for lunch and I'm like in fourth grade. People made fun of me actually. A couple kids who were like, "Oh, your mother gives you the weirdest food." And I felt weird about it and then, when I was in high school, I used to perform with this theater group and it was with kids all over the city, and I got exposed to a lot of things that I just...

Michael: (02:55)
I lived in the suburbs and we didn't really leave the suburbs that much and so I started getting exposed to different things, and I remember the first time I had a gyro, which to me floored me. That was like the most amazing thing in the world. It was at an arts fair. That's when I really started realizing that we were very fortunate to be given a full meal at dinner every day with my parents at the table having a conversation. It wasn't in front of the television. It was really awesome. Just totally awesome.

Stephanie: (03:25)
I think that's something that a lot of us are thinking about today. I mean, I hope we are. This idea that, regardless of whether we're serving food from scratch, that we're at least sitting at the dinner table. Looking back, do you have a sense of how that really affected you? Is it more than just a wholesome memory or do you feel like that really affected who you became as a person?

Michael: (03:48)
Well, I think that dinner was a thing at my house. Everyone had a job. You either were setting the table that night or you were doing the dishes. My brother and sister's names are Amy and Raymond and we would always say, "Amy, Raymond, Michael. Amy, Raymond, Michael and that meant Amy's in charge of this. Raymond's in charge of this. Michael is in charge of this. You were either helping mom, setting the table or doing the dishes. That brings people together and whether it be setting the table, helping mom cook, doing the dishes, cutting the grass. You didn't realize it, but now work is a really important thing to me, because I think my father instilled that in me and my mother instilled that in me. You have responsibilities not only as a child but now as an adult, and because we were taught early in life that you had to work for what you got, I think we're all better for it today and my brother and my sister, they're super hard workers as well. I think that's what that experience brought for me.

Stephanie: (04:41)
That's an interesting perspective. I think of the time in the kitchen, certainly as memory-building, and also cooking is such a vital skill, but hearing you talk, you raise a good point that it's bigger than just the skill that they're picking up. It's this idea of responsibility and just in general taking care of yourself.

Michael: (04:59)
In thinking about this. Something else is very poignant and it might sound... I don't know if it's... No, it's not weird. When I throw a party or when I host a dinner at the market or when I'm working with a friend on preparing a large meal, I'm working on that ahead of time. My mother had this rule where if I'm going to throw a party or I'm going to be the host, I'm going to answer the door with a drink in my hand, ready to greet my guests. I'm not going to be in the kitchen scrambling away trying to get stuff done. So it's like mise en place. Everything is in its place and it almost brings me to tears. It's like this lesson my mother taught me about mise en place, but she never used that French term. Everything in its place. Because of that, I keep myself organized in the kitchen. I can greet people at the door and I'm not scrambling when it's time for the party to start.

Stephanie: (05:54)
Talk about your mom's entertaining, because it sounds like what she was doing night in and night out would be a stretch for a lot of us, but what did it look like when she went big and had big parties?

Michael: (06:06)
Oh my gosh, so, fabulous, by the way. Every year we had this Christmas party in an area about an hour and a half east of Pittsburgh called Seven Springs. It was this Mountain Resort. We had a house there and my cousins would come and rent the house nearby, and the day after Christmas, my parents would throw this epic party. My mom and my cousin Linda, may she rest in peace, Lulu and the rest of the family would prepare amazing, amazing dishes. So my cousins lived in Annapolis, they would bring oysters from Annapolis. My mother has this dish called deviled shrimp that she would make and they would do baked oysters and there would be a big ham and my mother would prepare all types of things for this party.

Michael: (06:49)
The partygoers would bring food, too. Mr. Ferrari, again, he's not with us anymore, but he would bring something called bagna cauda. So, my mom would throw these parties and it would inspire people to bring other delicious dishes as well. I miss that party so much, but it's so indicative of the way my mother would entertain. So wonderful and warm and welcoming.

Stephanie: (07:11)
Yeah, there's a lot of love that went into that.

Michael: (07:13)
A lot of love, and being a little kid when you weren't invited to the party and like being in the backroom and looking around the corner and wanting to run over to the table and get a piece of shrimp. You weren't allowed there yet. But, when you were allowed to go to the party, when you kind of reached over that age limit, it was amazing. Very cool.

Stephanie: (07:31)
Obviously you were just surrounded by people who loved to cook and knew how to cook, but was there anything special that you think your parents did to really foster a love of food in your house?

Michael: (07:44)
They introduced us to it. My father used to say, "Eat it or wear it." If you didn't like something... No, we never had to actually wear the food, but that was his way of saying, "You need to try this, you need to try it." And as we got older, my father started collecting wine and he would introduce wine at dinner, and even when we were, before we were 21, he'd give us a little sip of something delicious, and there was always something new and interesting happening when it came to food. So, they did a really good job of just getting us to try things. And for that, people would say to me when we go to a dinner like, "Oh my God, you'll try anything, won't you?"

Stephanie: (08:23)
I wish I could do that with my own son. I'm working on it. But man, that's tough.

Michael: (08:26)
You know, it's interesting. My sister has been the same way as with her kids. When my niece, who's a sophomore in college right now, but I can remember her being 6 and going out for sushi and I feel like, "Well, who is this child eating sushi? I love it."

Stephanie: (08:40)
That's amazing. Yeah. One thing I was curious about is, do you have a first memory of being in the kitchen with your parents and contributing?

Michael: (08:50)
I do. It's with my grandmother, Grandma Volpatt, so my father's mom. My parents, on the weekends, would go up to the house skiing with my brother and sister and I was really young. So, I wasn't of the skiing age yet, and so, I would go and stay with my grandmother at her house and we'd ride the bus in the town and she'd get her girdle at Gimbels and we'd come back. But before we left, we would make a pizza dough, a dough that obviously rises with yeast, and we'd go down shopping, come back from the city and we'd roll it out and we'd fry the dough. In Italian "Torta Frita." "Torta Frita Margarita," she used to say. That's my very first memory and it warms my heart to talk about it.

Stephanie: (09:32)
It wasn't just Michael's parents and grandmother, either. He was surrounded by people who loved food. He completed his freshman year of college in Washington, D.C. And that year he spent his weekends working at his cousin's restaurant in Annapolis. When he returned to his hometown of Pittsburgh that summer, he decided to attend the University of Pittsburgh, and he started working for family friends who owned a catering company called The Fluted Mushroom. He chopped vegetables, do the dishes, whatever needed to be done. And all of it, he said, wasn't work to him. He was learning and he was having fun. What he gained from his early life experiences is something he wants to pass along to another generation.

Michael: (10:13)
Owning the Big Bottom Market has been a real pleasure. And my very good friends, Heidi and Deneen, Heidi has a young son named Zach and Deneen, Sage and Wilder, and I always said that the Big Bottom Market would be a rite of passage for those kids, and I really wanted it to be that and we've already had one do that rite of passage, and that's Wilder, and he's been so awesome and great in the kitchen, and he listens and he will do and try anything. And the point I want to make in telling the story is get out there and try something. I'm so proud of the work that Wilder has done, and I hope so much that Sage and Zach have that rite of passage as well and whether it's at the market or it's working down here at Johnson's Beach and the Snack Shack or whatever these kids choose to do or whatever the kids that are listening choose to do. Get out there and do it. Try it, do it, and you'll notice later in life what a huge lesson that ends up being for yourself.

Stephanie: (11:09)
Thank you to Michael Volpatt of the Big Bottom Market. You can check them out at bigbottommarket.com. On Instagram, they're Big_Bottom_Market and they're Big Bottom Market on Facebook. I'll link to the market and to Michael's cookbook on our site at kiddosinthekitchen.com.

Stephanie: (11:27)
Now it's time for Kitchen Questions, where I ask my guest a few quick questions to understand his kitchen a little better.

Child: (11:35)
It's time for Kitchen Questions. I have a question. What would happen if you put a little bit of the wrong ingredient inside a cookie? Why are cupcakes squishy? How often do you burn things on accident? Do you like cake? What is the difference between baking and roasting? What is your favorite recipe?

Stephanie: (12:00)
What is one ingredient you always have on hand in your kitchen?

Michael: (12:04)
Kosher salt.

Stephanie: (12:06)
What is your go-to menu when you entertain?

Michael: (12:09)
Homemade pasta with marinara sauce.

Stephanie: (12:10)
What about your easy weeknight dinner?

Michael: (12:13)
One-pan chicken. It's just chicken and homemade sauce with Parmesan cheese that you toss in the oven, but you pan sear the chicken thighs first.

Stephanie: (12:20)
Like a tomato sauce?

Michael: (12:21)
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Stephanie: (12:22)
I can do that.

Michael: (12:23)
Put them in a pan. A Pyrex dish. Put your delicious tomato sauce in there, some Parmesan cheese, maybe salt and pepper and some parsley and toss it in the oven at 350 until it's golden bubbly.

Stephanie: (12:33)
All right. Well, see, now we've got a recipe everyone can just run with. What is your favorite dessert to make?

Michael: (12:39)
I don't really love to make dessert.

Stephanie: (12:41)
Do you love to eat desserts or is it you just don't like my bait?

Michael: (12:45)
I love to eat dessert. My friend makes this date cake, that's so delicious. So I'll eat Christian's date cake.

Stephanie: (12:53)
I know that the Big Bottom Market biscuits are well known. What is your favorite store-bought biscuit?

Michael: (13:00)
Bob Evans Farms.

Stephanie: (13:01)
Oh, okay.

Michael: (13:02)
I worked at Bob Evans in the marketing department.

Stephanie: (13:04)
Full disclosure.

Stephanie: (13:05)
What is one surprising dish that you make using biscuits?

Michael: (13:09)
Moroccan chicken over biscuits. Got that recipe from my friend Trisha Brown. She is amazing and an adapted version of the recipe is in my cookbook and I do give Trisha credit for that. She deserves it.

Stephanie: (13:21)
English muffin or croissant?

Michael: (13:22)
English muffin.

Stephanie: (13:23)
Sourdough wheat or rye?

Michael: (13:25)
Rye.

Stephanie: (13:25)
Strawberry jam, grape jelly?

Michael: (13:27)
Strawberry jam.

Stephanie: (13:28)
Tea or coffee?

Michael: (13:29)
Tea.

Stephanie: (13:30)
Wine. Red or white?

Michael: (13:33)
Rosé.

Stephanie: (13:37)
All the wine. All the wine. Thank you again. That was very fun.

Michael: (13:43)
I really, really love talking, and anytime you want to chat, here I am.

Stephanie: (13:52)
My next guest is Phillip Baxman. He's the executive chef at the Westin hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio. He's the father of three kids and has been cooking with his oldest, Charlotte, since she was little. Charlotte, who's 8, is a pro with a knife. One of the basics of cooking, safe cooking, is proper knife skills. I, personally, continue to fall into my old bad habits, but I want to teach my son from an early age the correct and safest way to hold and use a knife. So, I asked Chef Phillip to walk us through this skill. Now before even picking up a knife, Chef Phillip recommended a clean workspace and a very sharp knife.

Phillip: (14:42)
Number one, you have to have a sharp knife, you cut yourself with a dull knife. That is a lot worse than cutting yourself with a sharp knife. With a sharp knife, it's a clean cut, easy to fix. Stitches if you have to, but they’ll be minimal. With a dull knife, it just tears up your skin and the big thing, making sure that you have a proper knife size. Now, for the standard adult, a 10-inch chef's knife works well. For Charlotte, Charlotte has an eight-inch Lobel's chef's knife. It's a knife that fits to her size a little bit better.

Phillip: (15:13)
You don't want this dwarf sword out of Lord of the Rings. Make sure you have the proper size knife, make sure that the knife is sharp, and then you need to make sure that you grip it properly. Really, if you think about your pointer finger and your thumb, you want those to be on the actual blade of the knife. And then, the other three fingers on the handle, and what that's going to do, is that's going to allow you to keep full control of the blade without it swiveling side to side.

Phillip: (15:40)
And to give you an idea, I don't know if any of you ever skated on ice skates or rollerblades, you have to support your ankle, otherwise that skate’s just going to wobble back and forth. So, you're pinching that knife blade between your pointer and your thumb and that keeps it from wobbling. That's the grip. There are some starter knives out there that actually have a hole by the blade, which helps to teach this grip. That's number two.

Phillip: (16:06)
Number three really is the free hand, the hand that's going to be holding the product that you're cutting. This is probably the hardest part that you're going to learn. If you put your hand on the table, put it flat and then, try to look at it and then, think of a spider. Really curl your fingers in, make your hand look like a spider and you need to curl all the tips of your fingers in, so your knuckles are furthest out and your fingertips are closest in.

Phillip: (16:36)
That's how you're going to hold the product. Then, what you're going to do is you're going to take that knife, you're going to put the tip of the knife on the cutting board. Now granted, we're just doing this without anything on the cutting board, right now. Keep the tip of the knife on the cutting board. That knife should never come off, that cutting board. Doesn't need to, and then you use it and you guide the blade with your knuckles. The minute that knife that comes off your cutting board, that means that the blade portion of the knife, the sharp part, is going to be higher up than your knuckles. That means that you can easily cut your knuckles. Leave the tip of the knife on the cutting board and you're guiding the blade with your knuckles. One of the challenges here, you'll have all of your fingers curled in, but you'll have your thumb out.

Phillip: (17:22)
I have cut the tip of my thumb off at least twice, just a little bit. There are so many nerve endings in the tips of your fingers that if you cut it off there, that guy bleeds and you don't want to do that. It's not fun. That being said, keep that thumb in. Once you have the form there and it's going to be very difficult to keep your fingers and you're going to want to revert back to having your thumbs out and your fingers out and that's just bad habit. You really have to think about what you're doing every time that you're cutting, until it becomes habit. Yeah, it will take some time from there. Biggest thing is you want to make sure whatever you're cutting, is on a steady surface. If you have an onion, you make sure you've cut the top of the bottom off of the onion and then you have a flat surface.

Phillip: (18:04)
You put the cut side on the cutting board so it's not moving around. Same thing with a carrot. Make one cut. Then put that cut side face down so you have a flat section. Those are the basic principles. Having proper knife skills is so important for many, many, many reasons. Number one is safety. Number two, really it shows pride and it shows character about who's cutting that. Because, what happens when we have proper knife skills is we get uniform cuts.

Phillip: (18:30)
Uniformity allows for many different things, proper cooking times. It's one, and presentations and other. It also saves product. You're less likely to waste food or waste those end cuts if you're really taking the time to have the proper cuts and the pride behind it.

Phillip: (18:46)
After you’ve learned how to cut, it's all about continuing to be safe. Don't ever, and I tell Charlotte this so many times, the moment that you take your knife skills for granted or think that they're good enough is when the knife is going to get you. Anytime you think, "Oh, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. I'm going to look up. I'm going to talk to this person over here while I'm still cutting." And then, you look back and next thing you know, oop, there you go. So, you just have to continue to respect the knife.

Stephanie: (19:12)
Thank you to Phillip Batsman for joining me. You can check out a video of Phillip's daughter using a knife with stellar technique on YouTube. Search for "Chef Charlotte and My Sous-Chef Daddy." I'll link to the video in our show notes too.

Stephanie: (19:33)
There are a lot of lessons that can be taught in the kitchen. We can teach cooking basics, of course, how to properly hold a knife, that brown sugar should be packed. How to make a balanced marinade, to never rinse raw chicken. We can also teach the science of baking soda or the math of doubling or having a recipe. We can teach about whole foods and nutrition, and as Michael Volpatt pointed out, we can also teach responsibility.

Stephanie: (20:06)
But perhaps the greatest lesson we can teach our children is an even simpler one. Enthusiasm, a fondness for cooking. That's clearly what Michael observed. When I first spoke with Michael, life was normal. We reconnected recently and swapped coronavirus stories. He shared that cooking is a form of therapy for him. So, during this time when his PR work has slowed and his market is closed, it's no wonder we'd find Michael in the kitchen. During the first week of California's stay-at-home order, he decided to make his mom's marinara sauce recipe. Then, on something of a whim, he grabbed his phone, turned on the video camera and recorded his first Facebook Live. Friends tuned in and they asked for the recipe, and they asked what he'd make tomorrow, so he kept going.

Stephanie: (21:11)
Michael calls his daily cooking show “Cooking in Place with Michael,” and you can catch it on the Big Bottom Market's social channels. It's his way of putting some joy into the universe during this unsettling time. I think about Michael's parents, Sharon and Ray, hosting parties and pouring their hearts into family weeknight dinners. It's an inspiration. For most of us, this level of enthusiasm in the kitchen is probably a... let's call it a stretch goal. We need to be realistic about our expectations. We're not necessarily trying to raise kids to be chefs or restaurateurs or cookbook authors. We're trying to encourage a way of thinking, a healthy attitude toward food and cooking. So, this Mother's Day, let's channel Sharon Volpatt and focus on putting some positivity out into the world. Let's smile in the kitchen. Let's exude joy, even if we have to fake it sometimes. Maybe our kids will learn some science or math or how to properly work a knife. But mostly, they'll soak up the joy, and I can think of no greater gift we can give our kids.

Stephanie: (22:38)
This Mother's Day will be different for a lot of us. We won't be taking our moms out to brunch. We're dropping by with a bouquet of flowers as we observe social distancing. Maybe we haven't even risked a trip to the store to pick up a Mother's Day card. Mother's Day is, in many ways commercial, of course, but it also has real meaning for many of us. It's a day to say thank you and I love you when maybe we haven't expressed our appreciation enough over the years. So, to my own mom, thank you for making me the person I am and for teaching me how to bake, and to moms everywhere, happy Mother's Day.

Stephanie: (23:42)
Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Connor.

Stephanie: (23:46)
With a reminder from my son.

Conner: (23:48)
If you like my mom's podcasts as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie: (24:08)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com, where kiddos cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.