I am beyond excited to be uploading this interview because it is with a very cool person that I have looked up to for so long! This interview is with Pamela Salzman, a renowned chef and creator of many cookbooks that my family and I have cooked from for many years. Her recipes are delicious yet healthy and always fun to make. You can follow her @pamelasalzman on Instagram, and her website has tons of yummy recipes and other resources to check out as well. Without further a due, keep reading to learn more about Pamela and her story!

1. When did you know you wanted to cook for a living?

Probably after I taught my first class. It was never a plan, cooking for a living, doing anything in the culinary world. It’s not where my education was. It was just honestly a fluke! I hate to say it. I have always loved cooking, but it was just a hobby. I was in a cooking group, and some of my friends that were in the group pressed me to take it over. I was sort of trying to figure out how to get back into the work world. I was like, “I’ll just do this once a month until I figure out what I really want to do with my life!” And then after I taught that first class, I was like, this is my purpose. It was a lot less pressure that way!

2. What goes into a good recipe, and how many times does do you typically make a recipe before it is perfected?

I really take my cues from my students, which is to say that I can’t assume anything. I can’t assume that people know terms that I might find to be basic or common knowledge. I think recipes need to be incredibly clear. And then in my experience in teaching in private kitchens where I’m using all kinds of equipment, I also know recipes have to be a little bit flexible in terms of timing because everybody’s appliances are different. In my experience, taking a recipe that I’ve written, I could make it 16 times in 16 different kitchens, and there are going to be differences in how the recipe turns out. So just that kind of knowing that you can’t say to cook something for exactly 30 minutes. I have to be able to give people visual cues as well and just again, make sure that things are clear.

As far as how many times a recipe is made before it is perfected, Pamela says:

It depends. For baking, I rarely nail it on the first. And with baking, you can’t tweak the recipe as you go along as you can with cooking because you just have to stick it in the oven and see what happens. And because it’s such a science, I can only tweak one ingredient, really, at a time. So, it can take anywhere from 2 times to 12 times before I get it right. And then for other recipes, like salads, I usually kind of nail it on the first try, or maybe I might want to tweak something because that’s easy, there are formulas for dressings. Those recipes are super flexible. The same thing goes with like a stir fry or a soup. Those recipes, just a couple times. When I used to teach, it was nice, because I had that experience where I would just keep teaching it over and over and over again, and I would be able to make those subtle changes until it was super perfect.

3. I love watching your Instagram live videos, and I have been watching them since the beginning of the pandemic. Are these live videos something you have started doing over COVID? And how else have you had to pivot during this pandemic?

I had been doing Instagram lives weekly for a while, and the format of Instagram actually changed so you were not able to save your lives. They were only available for 24 hours, so that’s why there’s no record of them on my feed. But I used to do them weekly on Mondays at 5 o’clock, which I still do. When the pandemic started, I actually had started doing some videos for the Food Network app, and a couple of them are up. I had a whole schedule of videos that I was supposed to do for them, and they were supposed to be live. And so, when they closed down their studio, I thought to myself, Ok, well, if I can’t do these Food Network videos live, let me just stay brushed up on my skills, and I’ll just do them for my followers on Instagram! I’ll just do those live. I will just stay fresh and keep connected with people. I can’t teach in person. I will just do it after this pandemic thing dies down after a couple of weeks. So, I started doing them daily on March 16, and after a couple of months, I started doing them six days a week.

And then I started pivoting my business which was to say that instead of the bread and butter of my business, which was teaching classes in people’s homes, I started teaching four week, what I call Cooking Bootcamp. They were obviously online, so I started doing those pretty quickly, like within a couple of weeks of the pandemic. And that was always the plan actually, is to do these courses. I just launched them much earlier than I had originally planned. And I’ve always had an online platform. I’ve always had a monthly, online cooking class that I offered to people who didn’t live in the area or who just didn’t have a cooking group that they participated in to access my classes. So, I’ve always had that, but these bootcamps are different. I take four courses last year, and I repeated a couple of them. And I’m repeating my plant-based bootcamp for the third time, actually, this month!

4. Your recipes are very clean and healthy, however there are so many diets and trends that are always coming out that claim to be the best way to be healthy, lose weight, etc. What is your philosophy when it comes to food and eating?

Well, I think everybody’s different, and I think that different types of constitutions really can be healthy with different eating styles. That said, I don’t really think that we should be rigid, and I mean that in a couple of different ways. I think that we need to have flexibility just within our own selves as we proceed through life. There can be different times in your life where things will change. You get older, you go through different cycles, you have different needs at different times, and even different seasons! I eat differently according to the season. But I think that I can say with a certain degree of confidence and comfort that I do believe that the best diet in general, I do have to emphasize in general, is a mostly plant-based diet. So, whether that’s 80% or 90%, I do think that’s the way to go. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be paleo and incorporate small amounts of animal protein into your diet and be a healthy person, but I definitely think that a mostly whole food and mostly plant-based diet is really, to me, the best. But there’s always room, there should always be room, for foods that maybe aren’t whole foods. I hate food shaming. I don’t think that there’s any food that is necessarily “off limits.” I don’t think that you can’t enjoy chocolate cake and sugar on your birthday! I think that’s silly.

5. I read how you agree that the Standard American Diet is making Americans sick. What tips do you have for people with little time, money, or resources who still want to break free from the Standard American Diet and eat clean at their convenience?

You know I think it’s easier now than it ever has been. When I started teaching 12 years ago, there were very few convenience foods that I feel like were, I don’t want to use the word clean, I hate that word when it comes to food, but that were preservative-free, or chemical-free, or whatever, sugar-free. But now I feel that there are so many great brands that can really support a healthy lifestyle or healthy eating with convenience. I think it’s a lot easier than it used to be. But I think that just starting with what you think you can commit to is really the best way to go about it. I really have never met very many people who can just overhaul their diet overnight and then stick with that. So, if you really want to reduce your meat consumption, then start with one less meal a week that has meat, and you can choose one vegetarian and see how that goes for you. Or instead of using 6oz of steak per person for your fajita recipe, try 3oz of steak per person and then fill in with extra vegetables. There are a lot of ways, actually, to amp up the nutrition in anybody’s diet, and I think that very few people would disagree that people could benefit from more fruits and vegetables. So, even just eyeing a new vegetable at the supermarket, and just saying I’m going to take this home, I’m going to go online, I’m going to find a recipe that calls for this, and I’m going to try it. And maybe just doing that once a week. I do think that most people, especially if you are trying to eat “healthier,” maybe lack some of the systems in place to make it easier and to be more organized about it; so, coming up with a meal plan every week, knowing what’s in season so that you can get what you want, things taste better, putting together a binder of recipes to try or your favorite recipes, just keeping your fridge organized and your pantry stocked, those are things that just make it easier, keeping your knives sharp.

6. If you could eat one meal for the rest of your life what would it be?

One meal?! That’s really hard! I mean, for me, I’m Italian, so it would be really hard for me to give up Italian food. But last night, I made branzino, which is pretty much is one of my favorites, and I was thinking to myself, this is so good! So, just a great, perfect filet, a fish, and maybe a little bit of pasta and fresh tomatoes and basil and some great seasonal veggies. That’s hard to beat for me!