DeepSummary
The podcast host Dan Pashman is writing his first cookbook called Anything's Pastable. After the success of his pasta shape Cascatelli, he was disappointed that most people were only making a handful of common dishes with it. So he decided to create a cookbook featuring new and different pasta sauce recipes to expand people's horizons. However, Pashman has never written a recipe before, so he assembles a team of recipe developers and editors to help create the cookbook.
The process of developing recipes is revealed to be extremely painstaking, with each recipe being tested and tweaked numerous times by both the developers and Pashman before being finalized by the recipe editor. There are many small decisions to make regarding style and ingredients that have a big impact. Pashman's wife Janie questions whether the immense effort required is worth it.
Despite the difficulties, Pashman finds the creative challenge exciting and wants to prove he can write a successful cookbook after his previous book was a commercial failure. He is driven by his passion for food and desire to connect with people through his unique perspective on pasta sauces beyond the typical classics.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Writing a cookbook from scratch is an extremely painstaking process involving extensive testing and tweaking of recipes.
- Even small details like ingredient measurements and recipe writing style require agonizing decisions.
- Bringing a fresh, modern perspective to classic cuisine is challenging without being overly beholden to traditions.
- Having a diverse team with varied expertise and backgrounds is valuable for developing creative, unique recipes.
- Passion, determination and a desire to prove oneself can drive ambitious creative projects despite lack of formal training.
- Creative endeavors involving immense effort require belief in the concept to persevere through self-doubt and naysayers.
- Failure of past projects can motivate the pursuit of new challenges to redeem oneself or get another opportunity.
- Involving family and loved ones throughout a long creative process provides support but also reality checks.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “I mean, I think it's fair to say. I think that if you look at cookbooks, you find the same 50 over and over and over again.“ by Evan Kleiman
- “I will not put any tomato sauce recipes in my cookbook unless they're really different from anything I've had before.“ by Dan Pashman
- “As much as it's a lot of work, it's also exciting to have a new creative challenge to push myself to do something that I haven't done before.“ by Dan Pashman
Entities
Company
Person
Product
Book
Episode Information
Gastropod
Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley
3/12/24