One Drink Book Club | Al Roker's Recipes to Live By

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another edition of the One Drink Book Club. Today we're going to be doing something a little different. We're not talking about a novel or a nonfiction. We're actually going to be doing a cookbook. We're going to be talking about Al Rokers Recipes to Live By, which he wrote with his daughter, Courtney. My guest today is Lindsay Bowers, my favorite daughter. Only daughter. Only daughter. Lindsay, this was your idea to do the cookbook. What made you think of this?

[00:00:35] Well, I thought it was really sweet that Al Rokers wrote a cookbook with his daughter and cooking's been a big part of our family. So I thought it would be really fun to talk about his recipes and make a couple of them since I've never been on the podcast before. All right. Well, tell us what you've chosen for our menu today.

[00:00:54] Yeah. So we're doing kind of a whole meal. We're starting out with French onion soup and then we'll be doing cereal crusted seared tuna, which is interesting and I thought it was something unique. So I wanted to make that. And then torta di riso, which is an Italian rice cake. So it's rice and then you bake it in the oven. Also something unique that we haven't made before. That's true. Never had that.

[00:01:17] Yeah. So then for dessert, we'll be doing apple crumble. And then of course, since it's the One Drink Book Club, we have the blood orange Aperol spritz. So we looked through the book and kind of found the ones that I thought were a little bit more unique that we've never done before, maybe. So yeah, that's how I came up with those ones. Well, great. So let's get to it. We'll go ahead and start with the French onion soup. We've already kind of started the onions going. I'm going to chop up some garlic.

[00:01:45] This recipe, it takes about four pounds of onions, but it's a mix of both Vidalia and white onions, which I've never done before. I would have always assumed you'd go ahead and do just Vidalia onions. But Al says that the two onions kind of give a little depth of flavor. So I'm excited to see how that tastes. Lindsay, what is your favorite French onion soup in the Washington restaurant scene?

[00:02:12] So French onion soup is one of my favorites. So I'm kind of a picky judge on this, but close to home to us is Lion Hall and they have really great French onion soup. But even closer is Cafe Colleen on Lee Highway right there. It's by far the best French onion soup. But the one caveat is it will burn your mouth the second you try to eat it.

[00:02:37] So you have to wait a solid 10 minutes before you can actually eat it. But that's definitely my favorite French onion soup. So we are a Today Show family. We tend to watch Today Show in the morning. What do you like about Al Roker? Well, Al Roker is one of the most positive and optimistic people on the Today Show. And like you said, we have it on every single morning. My mom really likes to watch the Today Show.

[00:03:03] But I think what I like about Al Roker is that he seems to really relate to everybody on the show. Everybody seems to get along with him. So he's kind of been a staple in our household, which is kind of fun that we're going over his cookbook now. Yeah. So to the onions, we've added a couple of different things. When it was caramelizing, we had balsamic vinegar, a little bit of sugar, some dried thyme, some salt. I just added the garlic cloves.

[00:03:32] I added the beef stock, red wine, and Dijon. You said that you already added the Worcestershire sauce. So I didn't add that. I'm going to turn up the heat a little bit on that. All right. And then we'll just let that simmer for another like 45 minutes. Takes quite a while. Great. Well, they always say you should cook with wine that you would drink. Right. This is a cab from Cult Vineyard, which is from 2020. And I might just have a little glass while we cook.

[00:04:02] Why not? It's the One Drink Book Club. So let's go ahead and start the dessert because that goes in the oven for about 40 minutes. The apple crumble. So we already have the apples prepped. And I'll said to use Honeycrisp and Granny Smith, which usually I've only used Granny Smith. So interesting that we're doing both. But both are good for baking. And then I'm going to saute them as well before we put them in the pan, which is another thing that I don't usually do.

[00:04:30] Just going to saute them with half a stick of butter. Once they're sauteed, I'll put them in the pan and then we'll do the crumble on top. It calls for lemon juice. It's only two teaspoons of lemon juice. So that's not a full squeeze here. Yeah, that's a big lemon. That's a big lemon. That looks like about two teaspoons. I'm not a stickler.

[00:04:52] So also once we saute the apples in the butter, we'll add a couple other things in there like cornstarch and apple cider, which is also new to me in putting in an apple crumble. So we're going to do apple cider, vanilla, cornstarch, and then a little bit more lemon juice. And then we'll simmer that just until juices are coming out of the apples and then transfer it to the baking dish.

[00:05:18] So actually, while I'm doing that, do you want to start mixing the dry ingredients for the crumble? I will go ahead and do that. Perfect. Great. So dad, this is new for you to have a podcast for a cookbook. I know you usually like to read nonfiction and historical fiction, which admittedly is not my favorite genre. Not your thing. But what are some of your favorite books that you've been able to review on the podcast? Well, the podcast has been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed it.

[00:05:47] And I've really appreciated both the authors that have come on the show as well as friends. You know me. I like to talk. I like to read. And so it's fun to talk about these books that I've really enjoyed. I would say my favorite that we've probably reviewed from a book standpoint has got to be A Gentleman in Moscow, which you've heard me talk about. But guest-wise, it's been really fun, too.

[00:06:15] I've had some authors on who are always really passionate. Brian Carso, who's a professor, wrote a book all about Benedict Arnold, which was an interesting one. I enjoyed that. Seems like it's been fun. And I've enjoyed seeing, you know, the things that you've come up with. So you moved out. It's been what? How long? Six months or so? Yeah. I'm close by.

[00:06:40] I live far enough, but close enough to that I can come by whenever I want. But it's been really fun. And I live with some friends. And what do you guys cook? Like, what's the cooking situation? So me and my one roommate both really love to cook. She and I both really like Asian food. So we've done a lot of different Asian meals. And our other roommate, Kara, is also a good cook and is very open to eating just about everything.

[00:07:09] Eating the food that you and Anna make? Exactly. Well, I've been over there. And you guys have made some incredible stuff. And Anna's an amazing cook. She is. She's made homemade pho, which was really good. And we've done different udon noodle dishes. She also comes from an Italian family. So she makes chicken parm and those sort of dishes. But yeah, we both really like to cook. And so it's been fun to have roommates that also enjoy cooking. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.

[00:07:38] We actually saw Al Roker in his book tour. He and his daughter, Courtney, went on a book tour. And they came to the Smithsonian. So it was really fun to see him in person. And they talked about a lot of these recipes. And they talked about the origins of the book. His daughter has been a personal chef and has been a food consultant and come up with a lot of recipes.

[00:08:01] One of the things they talked about with this particular cookbook was the idea that they were trying to write down those family recipes that came from their grandmother or their sister or their aunt. And really put them down. And some of them had never been written down. So I thought that was an interesting thing. And then it also made me think that if we were doing a Bauer's cookbook, what recipes would you put in a Bauer's cookbook?

[00:08:29] I think there are a lot of things that have been passed down from generations. Some that I don't know the recipes to to this day. My papa makes pasta sauce. He makes a couple different meat sauces, all of which are great. But he will not share the recipe. So hopefully one day that will be passed on so that we can know how he makes it. Something else is the family Caesar salad dressing. Which is also another papa.

[00:08:57] That's papa's as well. But it's a vinaigrette sort of dressing. Yep. That's one of my favorites. What would you say that's something in our house that we cook a lot? I like to grill a lot, as you know. Yeah. And I would say halibut is a big one. I was actually going to say that too. And we make that halibut with a curry sauce, which I know you've made. Yes. Which I thought is always a crowd pleaser. And it comes with that rice that has... Cashews. Cashews, jalapenos.

[00:09:27] Yeah. That's a really tasty one. That's a really good one. There's a Gordon Ramsay recipe. It's not a family recipe, but it's a recipe for herb-crusted lamb. Oh, that was awesome. The lamb chops. That's always a crowd pleaser as well. Everybody kind of has their own things that they like to make in our house. Like you're the griller. Mom usually does most of the things inside the kitchen, like pastas and fish dishes and stuff like that. Nick's our bartender.

[00:09:55] He likes his fancy drinks. He likes some good, some not so good. He'll make some sort of concoction and have all of us try it. And half the family is like, oh, great. And the other half's like, oh, never having this again. But that's been really fun too, that everybody kind of has their strengths and things that they like to do in the kitchen. You know, obviously COVID was bad.

[00:10:18] But one of the things I really liked about COVID was all of the meals that we had together. You know, there was one night we did a bourbon tasting. Yeah. And we'd have these big spreads for lunch that mom would make that were pretty awesome. I know there were a couple times that we did really fancy lunches where mom made lobster rolls one day. You know, things that you wouldn't necessarily make for lunch. But we had the time. Yeah.

[00:10:46] I think another fun tradition, well, it's sort of become a tradition, is that Nick and I will make the Christmas Eve dinner. Oh, yeah. Which is really fun. And it's not super traditional, which I also like. We did that Asian feast one year where we made homemade dumplings and crispy rice with tuna. The next year, I think we did that coconut curry halibut. And we did tuna tartare, which was also really good. We did a beef wellington one year, and that was a really. Oh, that was a showstopper.

[00:11:15] That was really fun, but also a challenge that neither of us have made before. And then just this past year, we did duck. So I'm curious to see what we'll come up with this year. Usually Nick's pretty last minute with his ideas, but they're always really good. So we'll see what we come up with. My apples have been simmering for about 10 minutes. So I'm just going to add the cornstarch, vanilla, and apple cider in there.

[00:11:40] So I'm going to cook that down until it thickens a little bit, and then I will put them in the tray. And my crumble is just about ready. In the crumble, we have brown sugar, flour, a little bit of salt, butter, and we're just kind of mixing this all together here. And that will go on top. So once I put this in the oven, this will cook for about 40 minutes. Okay. And then we can start on the torta de riso, which we'll also need to cook a little bit longer. So let's do that one first.

[00:12:12] Now that we have this, I will put the crumble on top. This smells really good already. One thing to note is it's always helpful to have the butter at room temperature for the crumble when you put it in with the dry ingredients. While you're doing that, I'm going to coat this pan with olive oil for our torta. Make sure I know how long this should cook.

[00:12:41] It's only 25 minutes. Good. That oven is already preheated to 350. So we'll go ahead and put that in there. So for the torta de riso, you have to pre-cook the rice. And then we're going to mix it with some other yummy things like breadcrumbs, chopped spinach, eggs, cream cheese, and parmesan. And some heavy cream. And then just a little bit of spices. So we've already got the rice cooked here.

[00:13:09] So we need four cups of cooked rice. We're going to combine the rice, spinach. So this is one package of frozen spinach defrosted. So I'm going to add that here. And then we'll add four of the eggs, cream cheese, parmesan cream, salt, pepper, and onion powder. Do you have a rice cooker at your place? We do. And I think it's used pretty much every day. It is the one kitchen appliance I feel like I can't live without.

[00:13:39] You'd go with the rice cooker over the air fryer. Oh, that's hard. The air fryer also gets used every day. But the rice cooker is so easy. You just put it in and then it's done. So what's a normal dinner at your place? We have a couple that we eat pretty frequently. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. The Japanese barbecue sauce, this. Oh, yeah.

[00:14:04] We make chicken using that as like our marinade and we love it. So we do this, soy sauce, lime juice, sometimes different chili oil or spices like that. And we'll marinate our chicken and then we'll do that with rice and a vegetable. We also make salmon a lot. Easy things because all of us work. So the Japanese barbecue sauce chicken is something that we make quite a lot. And it's standard. Yeah, it's definitely one of my favorite condiments right now.

[00:14:34] Well, joke. We're like, are you hungry or do you just want Japanese barbecue sauce? Where did you learn to cook? I know a lot of it came from mom. Yeah, I feel like mostly you and mom. I also just really enjoy cooking. So I would, you know, look up recipes on my own. Is there anybody on TikTok or YouTube that you follow that's food oriented? Just on my feed, I feel like I have a ton of different recipes come up on Instagram and stuff like that. One of my favorites is baked by Melissa.

[00:15:04] She does, she has a cupcake business, but she also is a really good cook. And she does really awesome like dressings and salads. So what, let's see. So we've added cream cheese. We've done four eggs, cream cheese, rice, spinach, and now we need the Parmesan cream, salt, pepper, and onion powder. How much Parmesan do you need? Three fourths cup. But cheese I usually measure with my heart, so. All right. How much onion powder? One teaspoon. Okay.

[00:15:34] And then pepper and salt. And then we'll also need a fourth cup of heavy cream. By the way, this looks amazing. I know. How have we never had this before? I know. I've never even had it at a restaurant. Have you? No, I don't think so. Once he gets that all mixed, we are going to add this to the pan and then do an egg wash on the top with just one of the last eggs here. And some water to water that down a little bit. Perfect.

[00:16:00] Recently, you saw somebody pretty popular in concert. I just went to Taylor Swift. It was so much fun. And what city? Indianapolis. Yeah. So. It was really, really fun. And I'm so happy I was able to go because the tour is ending. But I know you, while I was with mom's friends, you were with your friends in Chicago. I was.

[00:16:28] The last few years, we've done kind of a college trip to Chicago with a number of my roommates. Several of them live in Chicago. And food has played a part in that gathering. The tradition has been we go out to dinner Friday night. And then on Saturday night, we all cook dinner together. And so it's a lot of fun. We do like a big charcuterie. Andy always makes his sauteed halloumi, which is really good.

[00:16:57] This year, we did hanger steaks, marinated hanger steaks on the grill. But then we also did, Chad had recently gone on a hunting trip. So we did elk lorry and elk T-bones, which were really unique. But really delicious, too. So I thought it was less gamey than deer, for sure. Okay, good to know. Okay. So that goes in the oven. How long does that go in the oven? 30 minutes. 30 minutes.

[00:17:26] Our final dish is the seared tuna. Well, it's actually cereal crusted tuna. Or cereal crusted. I'm sorry. So this was really interesting because tuna is one of my favorite types of fish. But I had never heard of cereal crusted tuna. So this takes Captain Crunch cereal. And there's a little bit of a sriracha mayo topping on it as well. But crush up the Captain Crunch. And then we're going to coat it, the tuna in it. And then sear it on the stove. Captain Crunch is a bit sweet.

[00:17:55] So I think it'll be kind of a sweet take on tuna. Yeah, I'm interested. And I'm going to make a hot take here. I think my favorite Captain Crunch is definitely the peanut butter Captain Crunch. Now, I admit that peanut butter Captain Crunch would not work with seared tuna. So I'm going to have you make the sriracha mayo. Okay. Which will have mayonnaise, sweetened condensed milk, which is interesting too. Never use that in a sriracha mayo.

[00:18:24] I'm going to have you use the Kewpie mayo, which is the Japanese mayo. Which I think is way better, but also really good for things with fish. Then I'm going to crush up two cups of Captain Crunch in the food processor. Okay. And then once that's all crushed, I will brush the tuna with olive oil and then season with salt. And then we're going to press the tuna into the cereal. Okay. All right.

[00:18:53] So two tablespoons of condensed milk and then a quarter cup of the mayo. Okay. So while he's doing the sriracha mayo, I'm going to put this in a small bowl so that we can coat the tuna with it. Okay. So I have my tuna steaks here. Are you a sriracha person? I like sriracha, but not as much as other people do.

[00:19:23] Like I like a sriracha mayo, but I don't add it to everything. I know my mom really likes sriracha. And something that's been hard to find is sriracha recently because I think they had like a fight. The owners of it. Yeah, there was a lot of sriracha drama. There was. Okay. So coating the tuna now. And then we will heat a tablespoon of canola oil in a pan. And then we will cook the tuna in there.

[00:19:52] But the tuna is something that cooks very quickly. So in the recipe, it says 20 seconds per side. Which makes sense. I hate overdone tuna. I do too. Like that is just the worst. And while I'm cooking the tuna, if you don't mind cutting up some chives to dress them after, that would be awesome.

[00:20:19] So we've got our tuna steaks here coated in olive oil, salt, and the cereal. Because everything in the oven has a few more minutes. Well, we. Let's make our drinks. Let's make the Aperol spritzes. So Aperol spritzes. You chose that. I think it's an excellent choice. Yes. Especially since it is kind of lunchtime. Al's recipe here calls for three ounces of Aperol to four ounces of Prosecco per drink. So you want to get the Prosecco out of the fridge.

[00:20:48] It's on the door. And this one's interesting because it adds blood orange simple syrup. So we had actually already made this in advance. But when you make simple syrup, it's just sugar to water. Equal ratio there. But then there's the addition of blood orange juice in there. So that will add a fun flair to our Aperol spritzes. Yeah. So what I'm going to do is just kind of eyeball this since we're making five.

[00:21:17] And we've got a little audience of Will and Kate. And then we have Joe who has been kind enough to film this. Something else that some people don't do with Aperol spritzes is add the club soda. But I actually really like it because Aperol is very strong. The orange syrup. I love the squeeze bottles, the old kind of style ketchup squeeze bottles for simple syrups.

[00:21:45] We always have a bunch of different flavored simple syrups in the refrigerator. It's always nice for cocktail use. So once he finishes adding that, I'm just going to add a splash of club soda. And then we'll stir all of them and that'll be it. One of the things I liked about the cookbook, Linz, I am a huge fan of good pictures in cookbooks.

[00:22:11] And I thought that Al and Courtney, whoever they used for their photos, did a great job. They're all really pretty. They are really nice. All right. Perfect. So I'm going to give all these a little stir and then we should be good to go. All right. And then we can start our tuna. My favorite tuna dinner was after we actually caught a tuna on a fishing trip. You know, we did seared tuna.

[00:22:41] We did basically sashimi tuna. We did tuna nachos the next day. Yeah. That was awesome. Cheers. Mmm. Good. Very good. I like the blood orange. Yeah. That kind of cuts some of the bitterness of the Aperol. I think we're ready for our tuna, don't you think? Yeah, I agree. Let's do that. So the tuna is super quick.

[00:23:07] And I'm also going to get some green onions from the fridge. So we'll chop up just a few of these to garnish our tuna with. Um, and then we've already got the pan heated for searing it. And like I said, it cooks very quickly. So 20 seconds per side is what Al said. But these are pretty thick. So I might have to do it on the sides as well because there's steaks. And then sprinkle with sesame seeds and chives.

[00:23:37] And then we're going to drizzle that sriracha mayo on top. Great. So something else we're going to do for the French onion soup, um, is we're going to put a already done crouton. Thank you, dad, for doing this in advance. Did some, um, pre-made croutons that, uh, he did with baguette and olive oil in the oven. So we're going to add one of those to each bowl. And then we already have grated Gruyere cheese. So we're going to add the soup and then put the Gruyere cheese on top.

[00:24:05] And then we will broil them in the oven for a short period of time until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown. What are your other favorite soups? I love tomato soup. Like a good tomato, um, grilled cheese kind of thing. Yes. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. Mom makes a really good tomato soup with orzo in it. So I'm going to turn the soup off the heat. It's looking awesome. Um, and I'm going to ladle it into each bowl. This might get a little messy.

[00:24:34] We didn't have perfect bowls for this. I probably would have done it in a smaller bowl, but this will do. It smells awesome. Yeah, this looks awesome. I'm really excited for it. So now I'm going to get that Gruyere cheese I talked about and put it on top so then we can broil it. Watch out behind you. Ooh, that looks great. Ooh, that looks great. I'm going to switch this to broil. So we grated this before as well. So I'm just going to generously put that on top.

[00:25:04] How's our torta doing? Should be actually finishing up, but I wanted to let it get a little bit more golden. Okay. Okay, so we've got this soup here and I am going to pop that in the oven really fast. So now that that's in the oven, I think we're good to sear our tuna. Yeah, let's sear tuna. Super hot. Great. I am also a big fan of soups in the fall and I love a butternut squash soup. Mmm, yeah. I also like like a crab bisque.

[00:25:33] Yeah, I am definitely a fan of a clam chowder or a crab bisque. This looks like it's almost there here. Woo, hot. All right. Where's your platter here? Get that platter. We'll get that. I think these are looking great. Perfect. Great. So we'll slice that up. Turn that off. And then I'm also going to take out the soup. Okay, Lins. These look great. Ooh, yum. Look at those.

[00:26:05] Put those there. There. So now I'm going to slice the tuna and then we'll garnish it with that sriracha mayo, chives, and sesame seeds. It must be tough to do the Today Show and then when they do these food segments and not be able to eat it as quickly as possible. I know. They have their one bite and then move on. Have you ever visited the Today Show from the crowd? Maybe once we did. I've done it a couple times.

[00:26:35] I've been down there for work in New York and stopped by. And I actually met Al once back when they had the Dean and DeLuca across the plaza. But I went in and I was getting myself some breakfast and lo and behold, Al Roker shows up next to me and is getting four coffees, I assume for other people, which is very nice of him. And we talked about his first cookbook, which is his barbecue cookbook. Oh.

[00:27:04] Which we still do recipes for. Yeah. The thing that I think of the most is the corn salad recipe. Oh. Which we don't recognize. We use, in the summer, it's like a steak or grilled corn. Yeah, we make that a lot. Black beans, tomatoes, rice wine vinegar. It's a great way to use leftover corn too if you get good corn and need a place to use it after you have too much. It's great. So. Yeah, I love that one.

[00:27:33] Well, you've met Al a couple times now. So you met him at the cookbook. The signing. The signing. Which was nice. You met him at the White House Correspondents Dinner. This year. Met is a loose term there. We did get pictures with him. Mom has her selfie. Yeah. That's always a great event. There's a couple of Washington events, which I particularly like. The White House Correspondents Dinner is one of them. There's also one that they've done for years.

[00:28:01] It used to be sponsored by the Distilled Spirits Council, which is the liquor trade association, because they redid the still at Mount Vernon. Oh. And so they would sponsor a big dinner, and it would have all sorts of whiskey and bourbon tastings. Nice. It was out on the lawn in front of Mount Vernon. They also do fireworks over the Potomac. Oh, that's so nice. It's like a really incredible, incredible view. Sounds like it. So yeah.

[00:28:30] We've been lucky enough to be around Al. And again, I think we should cheers to Al and Courtney for the great cookbook. Yeah. The lovely recipes. The great recipes. I can't wait to try these. And thank you, Lindsay, for joining me on the podcast and coming up with the idea of doing something a little bit more creative than I've done before. Yeah. Thanks for having me. This has been super fun. Yep. Let's eat. All right.