Cooking with Curiosity with Tiffani Rozier

Tiffani Rozier is a chef, writer, chaser of curiosities and host of the podcast, Afros + KnivesTo offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BESTTRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Hey pal, thanks for joining me for another edition of Food Friday. TIFFANI: My name is Tiffani Rozier, I am what I refer to as a semi-retired chef because my podiatrist only wants it that way right now. I'm a food writer and I host and produce a podcast called the Afros and Knives podcast. ZAK: You step into your kitchen with a very specific vision in mind. You saw this recipe on the internet and you want to replicate perfectly. Well, that is one way to do it. But Tiffani says there's another way.TIFFANI: So if you show up to your kitchen prepared to practice the act of cooking then you kind of leave the idea of failure and mistakes behind as a dictatorship and you just lean into, like, hey this might not come out the way I had originally planned. This might not look like the picture I saw. But in the end no one's tasting this but you or maybe your family and if it's inedible you throw it out, you start again. And so with cooking it's like, connect with the food, connect with yourself. Or connect with your family history. There's just so many things you can be doing when you cook and it's just like, you can learn more about your family history, you can learn more about yourself and your temperament and your ability to wait for something. Cause waiting for yeasted dough to rise can be a thing and if you don't wait long enough you don't get the result you want. If you wait too long, it falls apart. Learning how to have a certain inner-sense of timing and then on top of that you need to stay curious and curiosity for me is kind of like the center belief of my life. People's favorite meals come from that. You're tasking that experience. The experience of a person coming into their kitchen, practicing the art of cooking and using a tremendous amount of curiosity and imagination. ZAK: You're surprising me in one way but you're also reaffirming some core philosophies here. Like, in art we talk about the process is more important than the product. In travel we talk about the journey is more important than the destination and in cooking I always thought of it as an exception. No, it's about the finished thing. But you're saying no, this IS about process over recipe or end result. TIFFANI: Exactly. Getting people to feel good in the kitchen and making them curious about what's possible. It's just like, there's so many ramifications. And so for me I'm like, go back to your kitchen and be curious. If I can tell you nothing else about cooking...go back to your kitchen and stay curious because if you're curious you will chase the information. You will get on Youtube and watch someone cut through an onion so you know what a small dice, or a mince or a brunoise looks like. You will go to a video to watch how somebody sautés a steak perfectly every single time. You will chase the information because we pursue the things that are important to us. For me it's always a win. Stay curious. Be curious. You buy a whole chicken and the first question you should ask is, what can I do with this? Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.