Interview with June Xie from Delish

Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She’s just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.

June Xie: I’m June Xie and I’m a senior food producer at Delish and today we’re going to chat about the Thanksgiving Feast I made for $25 on my Delish YouTube show called Budget Eats.

Suzy Chase: Dearly beloved we are here today to celebrate the gobble gobble with Budget Eats Thanksgiving Edition from Delish. Okay. I would love to chat about Budget Eats first, and then I want to dive into your Thanksgiving Edition. So, first of all, I am psyched to be able to chat with you about food. There may be 10 things that have gotten me through the pandemic and your videos are one of them. When I get burnt out on cooking, I go to your videos to get excited, to get back into the kitchen. I think my favorite video of yours is the one entitled “I Tried My Partner’s Diet For An Entire Week” and that’s where I learned about papad. Can you describe papad?

June Xie: Okay. I’m so glad you brought this up because a lot of viewers have reached out to me saying that I have been pronouncing it wrong my entire life. And, uh, maybe we should play a sound clip of how it’s properly pronounced, but I believe it’s something more like papad and you kind of turn the second syllable into a rolling u-r sound.

Suzy Chase: Well, however we pronounce it. It’s amazingly delicious. Can you describe it?

June Xie: Yeah, I think it’s made out of a pulse flour. So lentils, I think is my usual go-to kind of papad and it’s usually speckled with spices and it’s like a little dehydrated disc that when you apply it to heat, either in a microwave or on the stove top on a flame or frying, it, it turns into this very thin crackery substance that has little air bubbles trapped in it and it’s basically like a chip. And I like to describe it as an Indian flavored Lays baked potato chip. That’s the texture that it’s reminiscent of for me.

Suzy Chase: Yes. Oh my gosh. Now I had to search around on Amazon. Where do you find yours?

June Xie: I go to Patel Brothers in Jackson Heights, which is a swifty 15 minute walk from my place.

Suzy Chase: Oh, lucky you living in Jackson Heights. You have all the spices, all the food, all that goodness.

June Xie: You betcha and all the noise too, but it’s a fun affair.

Suzy Chase: So I also made a whole meal of Feta with Steamed Brown Rice and Black Bean Sauce. You have really inspired me to try new and different foods. Do people tell you that?

June Xie: Yeah, I haven’t met anyone in real life yet, but there’s a lot of viewers who reach out to me on Instagram and they just showme pictures of random meals that they put together and they tell me that they were inspired by my videos. So just go to town with it, put all the leftovers together or just cook to their heart’s desire. Kind of no rules, no borders, no boundaries. Just go for it.

Suzy Chase: You have such a flare with leftovers.

June Xie: I grew up eating a lot of leftovers. I think that’s why.

Suzy Chase: You just have a knack. So you also use this frozen Curry block for your Curry rice. What is that?

June Xie: Okay. It’s actually not frozen it’s just like in dehydrated pack form and it’s actually shelf stable at room temperature and it’s a Japanese Curry block. That’s essentially what it is. It has a lot of oils and spices and a little bit of MSG in there. And all you do is break off yourself, a cube or two and put it into water or your stir fry and it just melts into your pot and it makes your pot taste divine. It just makes your pot tastes like Japanese Curry.

Suzy Chase: Your partner, who is basically in every video is Aaron and Aaron has an amazing palate and I think he’s a good cook too.

June Xie: I think he’s actually a better cook than I am.

Suzy Chase: No! So where did you guys meet? How long have you been together? And I guess you guys live in Jackson Heights. I was going to ask where you live.

June Xie: Yeah, we live in Queens. We live in Woodside, which is a neighboring neighborhood from Jackson Heights, but it’s all good. As long as you’re in this part of Queens, you’re around good food, but Aaron and I met in China actually right after college in 2011, we were both on a teaching fellowship and we met during the teacher training Institute and we’ve been together pretty much ever since.

Suzy Chase: One thing I’ve learned about Aaron is he lives for spicy food and you use quite a bit of sambal oelek and something called red pepper, nice tasty, which cracks me up every time. What is that?

June Xie: Okay red pepper nice tasty I believe is just a catch slogan on the container of our jar of go-to gochugaru it’s a Korean chili flake. It’s very fragrant. It’s not all that spicy, but it has a deliciously red, vibrant color to it and we just like to sprinkle it like you would a crushed red chili pepper flake.

Suzy Chase: I also made your homemade ramen recipe. So amazing. I could go on and on, but we’re here to talk about Thanksgiving. So growing up as a Chinese immigrant, what was Thanksgiving like for you?

June Xie: To be honest, I didn’t ever grow up with the traditional Thanksgiving spread. My parents would just probably cook a few more dishes and they normally would, and that would be it, it would just be a slightly bigger dinner. It didn’t really mean anything to us as Chinese immigrants, what this holiday was about. And I mean, growing up, going to the public school system in New York, we would get fed that Thanksgiving story of like pilgrims meet Native Americans. And they were all happy together and they shared this feast. So to me at the time in fourth grade, I was okay, this is a nice holiday, I guess, but it has nothing to do with my personal history so it never really reflected or resonated with me personally,

Suzy Chase: As someone who never grew up with the traditional spread of Thanksgiving, what you did in this video was take a little inspiration from the traditions and mix it up with a little of what you call your own crazy, which I call brilliant. Can you talk a little bit about that?

June Xie: Yeah, I mean, I think what really helps me in all of these shows is having that restriction of budget and given that I can’t buy everything that I need means that I need to work it out in my head, what I actually can make and what I want to make and smush those two factors together. So knowing that I only had $25, I could not afford a whole turkey, which means I had to go away from the traditional feast of Thanksgiving, which often features a whole roasted turkey. So having discussed it with Julia we decided I needed to have turkey in some form. So I went out and I tried to find the most affordable Turkey and I found some turkey legs. And I was like, well, I have turkey legs, but I don’t just want to roast them that seems quite boring and it’s not really going to look like anything. So I just decided to break it down into meat, bones, and skin, and do something different with each of those components and look at them as separate ingredients.

Suzy Chase: So how do you go about the recipe development for this feast? Like what was your process? Because to me it looked like, in all of your videos, it looks like you kind of have a framework in your mind, but you work out the recipe on camera. It’s like watching you test the recipes in real time.

June Xie: I mean, I think you got it exactly right. I think that’s exactly what I do. I feel like there’s a three part process to the recipe development behind these videos. The first part being me, trying to think possibly what dishes I would want to make if I had all the ingredients on hand. And then the second part is going shopping and seeing what I actually have and adjusting my first thoughts into feasible recipes, given my ingredients that have now materialized in front of me and finessing as I go, as I cook, obviously and not having tested any of these recipes before, because I didn’t have the ingredients to test with it’s a little bit of, here’s my blueprint. I’m probably going to stray from it. Let’s see what mess I get myself into and let’s see how I can get myself out of it.

Suzy Chase: You said, and I quote, “having never cooked Thanksgiving meals before, I’ve only heard anecdotally that it is a multi-day love affair. It will break you mentally, physically, psychologically, emotionally and it is the perfect way to come together with family after days of slaving over your food.” So you made seven, seven total dishes. Can you give us a brief overview of the spread?

June Xie: Okay. So seven dishes. Let’s see if I can recall them all. I made two turkey dishes, the first one being Kung Pao Turkey and the second one being Mouthwatering Turkey. The second one is basically a spin off of Kou Shui Ji, which is a Chinese dish, very disgustingly named saliva chicken. If you translate it directly, it is saliva chicken, but I think it just means that it’s so delicious you can’t help but drool when you see it and it’s basically this slightly simmered chicken just like in plain stock or water. And then you shock it in ice water immediately so that it tenderizes without over cooking. And then you spread this like divine spicy, clear red atomic chili oil over it. And it’s got like Sichuan peppercorns in it and Sesame seeds in it. And it just coats that chicken, which has that essence of chicken now flavor bombed with spicy fragrant goodness so that’s one of my personal favorite chicken dishes in the Chinese cuisine. And Kung Pao, I feel like everybody’s had a Kung Pao chicken before so I just made a rendition of that with turkey, marinated the turkey overnight so that it tenderizes with that cornstarch slurry and then we seared it in a cast iron pan, and then we doused it in some sauce and then I put some pumpkin seeds in it, which turned out to be a misstep. But I think you’re just going to have to watch the episode to find out what happened and then onto the sides, shall we? Julia said we had to have potatoes so I got some potatoes, potatoes are cheap, they’re great for budgets and I decided to make some mashed potatoes, but not just any mashed potatoes. I roasted my potatoes then I scooped out the innards then I made a creamy mashed potato with those innards and then stuffed it back into the potato shells for a twice baked, mashed potatoes and for that I had to make some gravy and I got some mushrooms to make a mushroom gravy, which was fine on its own, but got very upgraded when I poured that gravy back into the pan that I had just cooked the Kung Pao Turkey in and that flavor made that gravy Aaron’s second favorite dish out of the entire meal. So gravy is where it’s at guys you’ve got to make a really good gravy because you can pour that on anything, your dry turkey if you have it your stuffing, if you have it and it just upgrades everything.

Suzy Chase: You can drink it.

June Xie: Yeah. I mean, sure. Why not? Why not? It’s Thanksgiving go for it. I made a not stuffing stuffing stuffed into a butternut squash half and I used some potatoes in place of breadcrumbs or bread cubes and Aaron really liked that one too. I personally really liked the potatoes, just boiled then roasted until they were crunchy. It was kind of like a cross between a potato chip and a hash brown and it was just delicious all around perfectly snackable. So there’s an idea for you, if you just want to make a cheap snack boil your potatoes and tiny cubes, coat them in oil and spices and then roast them until they’re crispy. It’s like the new potato chip. You’re welcome. And then I made a boring side, you know, just like some roasted caramelized brussel sprouts with a little bit of roasted onions and carrots because we all got to have our veggies. There was also a savory Curry butternut squash pie that I made because I had those butternut squash innards, and I had leftover russet potatoes so I shredded the russet potatoes and made a hash brown crust out of them and then poured the pureed butternut squash innards into it and baked it and it was kind of pleasing to me because I like baby food textures. Aaron totally hated it. So to each their own. But if you are a fan of that mashed potato texture and you like your hash browns, you might want to give this recipe a try. Let’s see, what else did I have?

Suzy Chase: You had some cranberry sauce.

June Xie: Yes. Cranberry sauce, pretty straightforward. A little bit of sugar, a little bit of citrus zest. I took the stems of some Rosemary sprigs because I don’t want the Rosemary needles falling into it and just infuse that slight Rosemary flavor into it. It was pretty good. A little squeeze of Tangerine juice at the end to loosen it up, add a little bit of sweetness and tartness. I mean, I love cranberry sauce. I feel like it’s one of the most delicious and Thanksgiving-y sides you could ever have. So there was no way I was going to skip that.

Suzy Chase: See, that’s such a June thing to add the Tangerine juice in it. Like I would never in a million years think of that,

June Xie: Hey, it was cheap. It was like seven for a dollar. I was like, I’ll grab one of these it’ll fit into my budget no sweat oranges were more expensive. They were like two for a dollar. So whatever’s in season. Whatever’s cheap. You just got to go with it. I think a lot of people look at a recipe and they’re like, I have to get every single ingredient on this list before I can make it, which is not only costly and troublesome, but also intimidating to some cooks, especially if you’re new and you don’t have much in your pantry. And you’re like, well, to make this one dish, I have to buy 20 things. Sometimes it’s just not feasible both economically and time-wise, you just don’t have time to do that so I think recipes are a great starting point to use as a blueprint, but they should not limit your ability to cook something delicious for yourself.

Suzy Chase: I want to talk about the comments. I hate it when people criticize Aaron in the comments,

June Xie: Aaron hates it too.

Suzy Chase: I mean, he’s there to be the critic.

June Xie: Yes and a reminder that he’s doing this as a favor for me, because this is my job and not his.

Suzy Chase: Right like he could stay in the other room and just work all day and not even participate.

June Xie: He’s a nice guy. He doesn’t seem like a nice guy. Maybe if you’re just meeting him. Because when I did meet him at first, I hated him for the first six weeks of my life, but it takes some time.

Suzy Chase: So since we’re knee deep in this fun pandemic and we can’t host dinner parties, what are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?

June Xie: I think we’re just gonna stay home, sleep until noon. Wake up, eat a lot of snacks, probably eat all of my leftovers that I constantly have because I’m home developing recipes, shooting recipes, testing recipes, and just no one else to feed it to. And, uh, I don’t know if I’m lucky, he’ll watch a movie with me most of the time, he’s just playing video games.

Suzy Chase: So I’m always impressed by how you never let anything go to waste. Where did you learn how to cook?

June Xie: I have a restaurant background. I worked in restaurants for a little over four years, but I feel like the thrifty side of me, the scrappy side of me basically just grew out of growing up with a work at home dad who, you know, threw together dinner so that we ate but like he would forget ingredients in the fridge and then I would look at this really sad wilting celery and like really dying herbs and I would just be like, dad, why, why are you doing this to us?Like there’s food in the fridge and you’re not cooking it. Can I cook it? And so I would just start cooking and I don’t think I made anything good, but I cooked it because I didn’t want to see the food go to waste. I think growing up with parents who were basically pretty low-income, I would say coupon clipping was a pastime of mine in high school. I loved to go grocery shopping and like look out for the deals. So I feel like I trained myself to do this from a very early age. And it’s just a part of me. I think waste not want not is the saying and it’s true for me. If you have it, why not use it?

Suzy Chase: I did a little research on you and I saw that you were the pastry chef at Loring Place. And I just had Dan Kluger on last week with his new cookbook Chasing Flavor and you were also a cookbook assistant to Lindsay Maitland Hunt and I had her on recently to talk about her cookbook, Help Yourself. Are you planning on releasing your own cookbook?

June Xie: Absolutely not. And just to credit I was not the pastry chef at Loring Place. I worked under the pastry chef at Loring Place and the pastry chef that I worked for is Diana Valenzuela and she’s absolutely amazing I feel like she’s one of the most talented pastry chefs I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, but no, no cookbooks in my future, if I ever were to come out with a cookbook, I think I would have to transform the idea of what a cookbook is. I feel like there would be a lot more maybe writing in a narrative form over recipes that lay out exactly what to do. I’m not really recipe oriented despite being a recipe developer. I grew up in a Chinese household a lot of it is oral history, a lot of it is learning by observing and doing and not so much following a written recipe. So it’s not really in my background to work through recipes like in the American tradition so it’s almost like a second skill I’m trying to acquire and not really an instinctual gravity towards it.

Suzy Chase: You know what else I’m thinking about as much as your videos are quirky and fun. They’re also incredible lifesavers for folks who might be dealing with food insecurity now during the pandemic and economic stress. Can you talk a little bit about that?

June Xie: I feel like there’s definitely a lot of viewers who have written in and have said, you know, this has been a terribly hard year and it’s really nice to see you do so much with so little. And I feel like the reason why this video series has been quite successful is because it’s practical. It’s because people are unemployed and people are low on funds and we don’t know when this pandemic is going to end and we don’t know if things are going to change soon enough and it’s, it’s a very real side of what we’re living through right now. It’s pretty horrible. 2020 has been pretty bad and it’s not like these issues that we’re facing this year are brand new. They have always been here, but I think going through the pandemic and going through this poor handling of our response to it has really shown us where our weak spots are and it’s put it right in front of our face. And it’s saying hey, you can’t ignore me now because look at all of these people going through this very hard time. I mean, eating on a budget has always been a concern for working families and I think now more than ever, it’s on top of everyone’s mind.

Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Last Night’s Dinner, where I ask you what you had last night for dinner.

June Xie: I don’t know if you want to hear this

Suzy Chase: I’m dying. Yes, I cannot wait. Okay.

June Xie: Yesterday I had the pleasure of eating many of my leftovers from my Christmas Budget Eats sheet, including salmon fish bones that is right fish bones and, um, some pork spare ribs where most of the meat has fallen off and I was just gnawing on bones there’s a lot of bones in my diet behind the camera I’m kind of a bone fanatic. And after that, I went onto a medley of spicy pickles, canned fish, as well as some Indian snacks, including these delicious fried chickpeas. If you live near an Indian grocery store and you have the opportunity to go into their snack aisle, you need to grab yourself a couple of bags of fried Indian snacks. They are one of the most delicious, crunchy things you will ever eat. After that I had half a slice of my Buche de Noel which I also made for the Christmas episode, as well as a lot of chocolate and a lot of cheese. And do you want me to keep going?

Suzy Chase: Yes.

June Xie: I basically never stopped eating.

Suzy Chase: And you’re so tiny!

June Xie: I mean, it’s, uh, I don’t know where it goes, but apparently according to an internet theme, as soon as I hit 45 it’s all going to just poof, appear in my face so we’re going to hold on for another 15 years and then I’ll be not so tiny anymore.

Suzy Chase: Okay. Tell me about salmon bones.

June Xie: Okay. So for the Christmas budget episode, I made the salmon soup. I grew up with a lot of soups, pork soups with a lot of bones in it because bones are really where the flavor is. And I managed to grab a bag of salmon scraps from my local grocery store for only a dollar and it’s all the trimmings off of the fish. So the tail of the fish, the spine of the fish, where they have cut the filets off, you know, the fins of the fish, the skin of the fish and so there wasn’t a lot of salmon meat in that bag, but there was a lot of trimmings and a lot of flavor. So I made a salmon soup for that episode. And then I’m left with these bones and I know some listeners out there, my shirk at it but I really just like to chew and gnaw on the bones, it has so much flavor in it and there’s like a little tendon that runs along the spine that is quite chewy so if you like your textures and you’re not grossed out by this salmon bones, it’s where it’s at, baby.

Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web social media and where can we find your Thanksgiving recipes?

June Xie: Obviously if you want to watch these Budget Eats videos, you can find them on the Delish YouTube channel and I have an Instagram, but you’re going to have to hunt for me. It’s okay. It’s easy. You have Google. Google will tell you and Thanksgiving recipes will be on the delish website and if you have any recipes that I didn’t put on the website, feel free to reach out to me and I’ll give them to you. I don’t put all of my recipes on the website because not all of them are tested. And honestly, I don’t feel proud of all of them to be giving people prescriptions of how to cook them. But if you want them, I’ll give them to you.

Suzy Chase: I am thankful for you and everything you’ve taught me how to make on YouTube. Thanks so much June for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.

June Xie: Thank you so much, Suzy. It’s been a joy

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