The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
The Art of Seasonal Cooking with Pascale Beale
This episode is sponsored by Saturn Press!
Hey indie bookshops!
Did you know that greeting cards are a fantastic way for bookshops to boost sales? Saturn Press creates beautiful, handcrafted letterpress cards that customers love to purchase alongside books, helping bookshops grow and thrive.
As a thank you for tuning in to The Bookshop Podcast, Saturn Press is offering indie bookshops 10% off your first order! Just use the code BOOKSHOP10 at checkout and discover how adding cards to your bookshop can make a big difference to your bottom line.
Here's to supporting local bookshops, one card at a time.
https://www.saturnpresscards.com/
In this episode, I chat with Pascale Beale, who shares her culinary journey from a French-English upbringing to becoming a California cookbook author and cooking instructor. Her philosophy on food has evolved significantly over the decades, shifting from traditional French cuisine to a Mediterranean-style approach that emphasizes seasonal vegetables and fish.
The transformation in Pascale's cooking philosophy mirrors broader cultural shifts. Where once her cooking classes featured red meat prominently, today she finds students gravitating toward vegetable-centric, lighter fare. This evolution reflects both the natural influence of California's climate and changing attitudes toward health and sustainability. Her deep commitment to seasonal eating, instilled by her grandmother in the French Alps, remains the foundation of everything she creates.
What makes Pascale's story particularly fascinating is her unconventional path. After fifteen years in property development and financial management, she returned to her first love – cooking – establishing Pascale's Kitchen cooking school in Santa Barbara. Her business background provided unexpected preparation for entrepreneurship, though she notes the challenges of wearing "all the hats" in a small business. The pandemic pushed her creativity further, developing food photography skills that allowed her to shoot her entire "Flavour" cookbook using just her smartphone.
Now embarking on a new multimedia cookbook project that combines text, audio, and music, Pascale continues to reinvent how we experience food through media.
Subscribe to hear more conversations with culinary innovators and storytellers who, like Pascale, remind us that food is far more than ingredients – it's about connection, tradition, and the joy of sharing.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to Episode 294, and it's brought to you by Saturn Press. Code 294, and it's brought to you by Saturn Press.
Speaker 1:Hey, indie bookshops, did you know that greeting cards are a fantastic way for bookshops to boost sales? Saturn Press creates beautiful handcrafted letterpress cards that customers love to purchase alongside books, helping bookshops grow and thrive. As a thank you for tuning into the Bookshop Podcast, saturn Press is offering indie bookshops 10% off your first order. Just use the code BOOKSHOP10 at checkout and discover how adding cards to your bookshop can make a big difference to your bottom line. Here's to supporting local bookshops, one card at a time. Wwwsaturnpresscardscom.
Speaker 1:As a footnote, I was in Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara yesterday and picked up some Saturn Press cards. They are gorgeous. I purchased one called Feet you May Meet and it has little animal tracks on it. It's beautiful. I've also ordered a couple of sets of box cards. One is a cream card and at the center of the top of the page it has a little typewriter in black, and the other one is the same cardstock but with a little feather ink pen at the top. Check out your local indie bookshop and ask them if they sell Saturn Press cards.
Speaker 1:Okay, now here's this week's episode. Pascal Bill grew up in England and France, surrounded by a family which has always been passionate about food, wine and the arts. She was taught to cook by her French mother and grandmother. After graduating from business school in London and 15 years working in the property and financial markets in California, pascal returned to her first passion cooking. She has, over the past 18 years, written 11 cookery books, hundreds of articles for local newspapers, food magazines and is a multi-award-winning columnist for Edible Santa Barbara. Her first cookbooks a menu of all seasons spring, summer, autumn and winter focused on Mediterranean-style seasonal eating. Hi, pascale, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, Mandy, thank you so much for inviting me on your show.
Speaker 1:I'm delighted to be here and I'm delighted to have you here. After looking at your cookbooks and chatting with you in Los Angeles, I would love to know how your philosophy on food, eating and cooking has evolved since making apricot jam as a child with your grandmother to creating Pascal's Kitchen in Santa Barbara.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh. Well, yes, it has. It has evolved over the decades that I've been cooking. I think one of the biggest changes is the amount of meat that we used to eat. My grandmother came from Normandy and she cooked what we think of as classic French food. I mean, if you open Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and you read any of those recipes, I read that and I read that's my grandmother's food. So there was lots of butter, lots of cream, and there was always some kind of protein, often lamb or pork or chicken or whatever with every meal with fish and fish.
Speaker 2:I grew up in France and in England and in England, where I lived with my mum, we ate a simpler diet, a simpler, sort of more Mediterranean in style, and that's very much my mother's cooking and she would also cook Indian food and cook North African food and just we had a sort of more international cuisine.
Speaker 2:And when I came to California and started the cooking school, after working in another field for the first 12 years that I was here, but when I finally opened the cooking school and I look back at those menus, I think almost every other class was red meat, beef or lamb. And now when I teach classes, there is no red meat. If I put red meat on the menu, I cannot fill a class, and I think that might be a reflection of this region, of this area. That might be a reflection of this region, of this area. So my the food has gone from, I guess, a more classic type of French cooking to a much more Mediterranean, really heavy vegetable and fish focused diet, compared to and I don't mean diet as in the diet, I just mean the way of eating compared to what I ate before yeah, I I agree with you.
Speaker 1:Especially along coastal California we definitely have a kind of Mediterranean way of life and eating it changes a little once we start to get inland California towards the mountains.
Speaker 2:Yes, but I think that's also a reflection of this climate. The climate lends itself to that type of cooking. We don't live in pouring rain. It's not horrible and damp the way it was in England, so I think the climate itself lends itself. You eat, particularly in the summer months, lots of salad, light food, and I know that that's what my students ask me for.
Speaker 1:Yes, the California climate is definitely a reflection of the food we grow and eat. You mentioned that your mother used recipes from different countries. Yes, and I'm guessing she used a lot of different spices. So, being French and English, what did both cultures teach you about buying food, cooking and flavors?
Speaker 2:So I learned to cook really the basics with both my mother and my grandmother and my grandmother really took me under her wing and I would go shopping with her and she was very good at teaching me and it was really by osmosis. It wasn't her saying, right, today we're going to have a lesson on picking cheese or something. No, I just went with her all the time and in the course of observing her buying fruit and what she looked for, and she would tell me certain things. You know why am I picking this peach as opposed to this peach? She was very, very particular about things and she lives in the French Alps. So in the French Alps, because of the altitude and obviously the longer winter, everything arrived later. So growing up for me apricots and cherries were very much midsummer fruit, whereas here you get apricots and cherries in late spring, so they're at least a month or more earlier here in California than they were in the Alps.
Speaker 2:When I was a child In London I was just thinking about this. The greengrocers around the corner during the winter months. I mean it was pretty dismal, I think some of the food. It's much, much better now. You have fabulous greengrocers in London and you can just get amazing things.
Speaker 2:But as a child, then what was available was, I mean, obviously everything was very seasonal, and I think that's the biggest difference is that I grew up eating and I think most people, if they are 30 or 40 years old or older you grew up eating seasoning because that's what was available. You didn't have this huge worldwide shipping of product where, everything you know, you can get apricots here in December, which is nonsensical to me because they don't taste good. So when you grow up eating the things that are literally just picked, they have a completely different quality of flavor, of taste, of everything about it is different, and I have tried, wherever I've lived, to just find what's in season and what's at its best. What's at its best, I mean, when you bite into a tomato, you know a big, fat, juicy, heirloom tomato that's been heated by the sun and it's got all this, I mean, and the flavor is incredible. And then you get a tomato in the middle of winter that is mealy and dry and has no flavor. There's the prime difference between the two.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think if we're lucky enough to be able to choose what we eat, then eat fruit and vegetables that are seasonal. Yeah, you just can't beat the flavor. Pascal, our childhoods are similar. I grew up in Tasmania, australia, the little heart-shaped island right down the south of the mainland of Australia. It was a cooler climate and we had fabulous apples and pears. Oh, my goodness, they were delicious. Yes, we had great apples and pears, fantastic, oh yeah, so crisp and juicy and delicious.
Speaker 1:But then when I moved to England I think it was 82, I think I survived on peas, eggs and toast because there wasn't a lot to choose from and either I don't remember farmer's markets or I wasn't doing the farmer's market thing at that stage of my life.
Speaker 1:But now when I've gone back to England or Ireland, oh my goodness, the produce is fantastic. There seems to be more community markets, more farmer's markets and the food is wonderful. When I first moved from Australia to London, then London to Los Angeles, I think I'd only ever seen maybe an iceberg lettuce or perhaps romaine. I honestly can't remember, because when I was younger, dad grew all our vegetables but there wasn't a lot of choice when it came to lettuce or greens. But when I moved to Los Angeles I remember there was a supermarket underneath the Beverly Center was kind of a healthy foo-foo kind of upmarket supermarket and I was standing there one day I went to get lettuce and I was looking at the lettuce and I went oh my goodness, there must have been 15 different types of greens and lettuce and endive. And oh my goodness, it was extraordinary seeing that for the first time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean in London, you know, you had, you know your basic cost lettuce, maybe the equivalent of a butter lettuce or something. But in France you know the frise and all the chicories and the endives and I mean all of those things and those were sort of staples in French markets. So it took a while for that to come over to England. My mother made lots of curries and dals and I always remember sort of lots of spices and a food that heats, that warms you.
Speaker 2:We're big soup eaters in our family, so there's always some kind of soup going and she definitely delved into foods from other countries, much more, much more so than my grandmother. My grandmother was pretty much strictly French, with forays into a little bit of Italian food. They live very, very close to the Italian border. I mean literally it was 12, 15 kilometers away. You had to drive up a mountain pass to get there, but in terms of mileage it's not that far. But we would drive to Italy to go and get the ingredients. Because that's what you did you got the things at their source, which seems crazy, but that's how close it was. So you know.
Speaker 1:Now you have studied and worked in business and marketing, property development, invested in restaurants and financial management to raise capital for small businesses. How did you go from there to opening up your cooking school, pascal's Kitchen? What I love about your story, pascal, is that when you moved from London over here to Los Angeles, you had nothing to do with cooking, right? Not at all. How?
Speaker 2:did that happen? I came here to work in the property development business and I had been to business school and came out to work for one year in the property business and that turned into two years, turned into five years and basically I've never gone back. And during that whole time we did a lot of business entertaining, and the business meant that we were working with the same crew of people for many, many months on a project and we would often have dinners after work and, rather than going out, everyone would come back and I'd cook. I would note down what everyone preferred to eat and what I had made, so I wasn't repeating myself. And this went on for a number of years.
Speaker 2:And during that timeframe in LA we had lots of friends in the restaurant business, because we love going out to eat and that was sort of my the big splurge. That was always. You know, going out to eat was the best treat. And so I made friends with different chefs. Some of them were very kind and let me come and do a mini stage in their kitchens. And during that time I realized a number of things. One is that I never wanted to own a restaurant. I invested in restaurants. I don't know that I would do that again, but I did invest in a couple of restaurants Not very much, thankfully, and thankfully the ones that I invested in were successful. So I also realized that what I thought I knew about cooking was really a drop in the buckets and that I had so much more to learn to be able to produce food at a level that was well, even even if I was aspiring to be certainly the restaurant that I went to where I did the stage. So after three days of being there and I did this a couple of times I realized that I needed to learn a lot more. I had to push my boundaries, which I did over the course of the next five, ten years.
Speaker 2:And really it was when I moved to Santa Barbara and my work had changed. I just had my daughter and I looked and I was doing some financial management and raising capital for small businesses. It sort of just happened. Rather than somebody saying, oh, why don't you open a restaurant, I said, well, no, you know, I've got a small child and we want to be able to travel.
Speaker 2:But I could do what I want to do in a restaurant if I did it as a cooking school and I didn't have a business plan, I just went. I'm going to open a cooking school. Let's just start teaching people to cook. And it really came about very quickly and I started every single class since the very beginning. I started in 1999. So this is 26 years and every single class has been a three-course meal, because I like to teach about timing. I think that's the biggest challenge people putting a whole meal together, a three-course meal together. It stresses a lot of people and so I teach about timing and we cook together for about two hours and then sit down and eat the meal.
Speaker 1:Well, it's definitely working because your classes are selling out. So people are interested in this whole idea of timing your menu or timing your dinner party. Honestly, I think people seem to be getting more into the idea of having dinner parties. In the 50s and 60s it was a popular thing to do. Perhaps it's a rebound after COVID. We want to be around people sharing food again, and I understand why the timing of a meal is important to people. Now are you finding, as you're chatting with your students, that there seems to be an interest in planning a dinner party and the menu again?
Speaker 2:I think the pandemic had a huge impact on people's relationship with their kitchen, some of them rediscovering their kitchens and rediscovering cooking because they had really got away from that and when everyone was in lockdown we just sat there going, okay, we need to cook, and I think it helped people feel more connected and also, I think, the results of the pandemic people realized that in fact, when they go out to eat or when they share a meal with people, you are in contact with people and having an experience that is very different to talking to somebody on the phone or so constantly being forced to eat at home when finally things opened up to then be able to share that with other people, I think is very special. I hope that dinner parties haven't gone away. I love them. I quite like impromptu gatherings rather than planning something weeks or months in advance. But just you know, the impromptu Sunday lunch, or I think that those are lovely or an impromptu picnic.
Speaker 1:With that in mind, what ideas can you share with people who shop at the farmer's markets? They come home and they're thinking, okay, how can I prepare everything so that it's ready for me to cook and use during the week? Because I think for a lot of people coming home from work having to prep food it can be a real pain because you're exhausted.
Speaker 2:So I again. Everything is seasonal for me, so it really depends on what's in season. I make a batch of vegetable stock or chicken stock, so I have batches of that available, so it makes making a soup or a stew very simple, yeah, but I love how you do that, how you prepare that soup, that base.
Speaker 2:Well, I use all the trimmings. So, as I'm cooking during the week, if I'm using lots of parsley, I keep all the parsley stems. If I'm peeling onions whatever I keep the onion, the outer layer of the onions. If I've used leeks, I chop off the leek tops and keep those. If I've used carrots, I peel the carrotsek tops and keep those. If I've used carrots, I peel the carrots, I keep the carrot peel. All of this goes into.
Speaker 2:I have a large bag that I keep in my freezer and I put all of those things into the freezer and then once a week I pull out the bag, put everything into a big stock pot and fill it with cold water and simmer that for 30 to 40 minutes and you have this beautiful, fragrant vegetable stock. It's super simple and then use that to then make soups or to use I freeze it in different size containers. So sometimes I'll put some of it into an ice cube tray because you know, sometimes when you're making a pasta or you have rice or you have you've cooked a chicken or you've cooked a fish and you think it needs a little stock, this is too dry. You don't want to put water in there. So if you but you don't want to defrost a huge gallon thing of stock, so that's where the ice cubes come in, very handy. So if you put stock into an ice cube tray and freeze it and then you can pop the ice cubes of stock and you only need one or two just to give it the liquid that it needs to cook. So I do that every week.
Speaker 2:I have a friend who I went over to her house one day and we were chatting and talking about things and she said oh, it's nearly lunchtime, do you want to stay? And she goes I haven't got much, do she's French? And she goes let's do a TDF. I looked at her and I went a TDF, tdf, what? What does that mean? She goes ah, tour de frigidaire, a tour of the fridge. And so we grabbed everything that was in the fridge and we had a look and we said, right, uh, we can make this, this and this, and I love those.
Speaker 2:So I often do vegetable roasts. It's an impromptu, it it's a great thing to do. I go through, you know, whatever I've got, if they're carrots and courgettes or zucchini, depending on where you come from and there might be some shallots, there might be some little potatoes, there might be whatever it happens to be, and I get all the vegetables together and toss them in olive oil, some salt and pepper. I love herbs. I cook with a lot of herbs and some herbs in there and roast that and I might do a big vegetable roast with a salad. That's a great midweek meal. If you have a chicken, you could roast a chicken on top of all those vegetables. A one pan dish, which is super simple. I don't like complicated food. Nothing in it. There's nothing in any of my cookbooks where you need some weird piece of equipment or a sous vide machine or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I go through your cookbooks, I've noticed that that there's not really anything that I have to go out and buy to be able to prepare your dishes. Although, having said that, I saw on Instagram I guess it was the other day you had posted this incredible piece of art. It was absolutely stunning.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, it's a crudité platter, so I do these big well, I do small ones as well, but that one was huge. That one was about two feet by at least two feet long. It's a giant crudité platter that had 15 or 16 different types of vegetables in it, so each vegetable is prepared. Now. That is not complicated, it's just time consuming to do.
Speaker 1:Well, whatever you call it, it was absolutely beautiful. It looked like a painting, a piece of art. Oh, whatever you call it, it was absolutely beautiful. It looked like a painting, a piece of art. Oh, thank you so much, and I love the way you had peas in the pods and some of them were just open so you could just get a little glimpse of the peas in there. It was absolutely stunning, and if you'd like to see these images, go to Instagram and punch in at Pascals Kitchen.
Speaker 2:So on Instagram and this is also an offshoot of what happened during COVID, because I couldn't teach in person, I started doing Instagram lives, so mini classes, and so within the feed there are lots and lots of mini episodes. Obviously, these things were shot live, so the conversation is where you'll see the conversations about what's happening. But I put more recently. There are lots of very short videos literally 15 seconds or less of the creation of a dish, and then I've put the recipe into the text block. If you scroll through those you will come across pictures of the crédité platters.
Speaker 2:No two are alike because obviously it depends on what I can find. And as through the seasons the colors change and it's wonderful to see some of the winter ones have a completely different color palette, and we're in spring now, but when we get to summer it will also have a different palette. And then I make a vinaigrette and a herb pate, which is one of the things that are that are in the new book, a season in a jar. So I have these seasonal herb pates which I've become completely obsessed with and I use it on everything. I use it with the vegetables. So I like to like to make. You know at the beginning. I will make a couple of jars of this, and it's wonderful in soups, it's wonderful in pasta or in rice with the roast vegetables. It's fantastic on toast with a poached egg on top.
Speaker 1:And can people purchase these from you or order them from you online and then come and pick them up in Santa Barbara or have them shipped?
Speaker 2:Yes, I did not open a. There's not a physical Pascal's Kitchen shop. There is an online shop and in there there are. I have a whole line of herbs and spices these are dried herbs and spices and I have a line of jams and preserves. There will be in the coming months a lot more inventory, but right now there isn't very much because it's all sold out. So it's more marmalades and things at this time of year. Well, it's just coming into stone fruit season, so as soon as the stone fruit arrives, then there'll be lots of that, and then oils and vinegars and beautiful salad bowls and all sorts of things like that and obviously all the books. Everything is to complement the book.
Speaker 1:And if anyone living in Santa Barbara wanted to order one of these gorgeous cruditaire platters, can they do that and come and pick it up.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, they can do that. The best way is to just shoot me an email. I mean, I have a menu of things that I offer every week and I teach bread making, sourdough bread making, and so there are things that people can pick up from me. And the crudités plateuse yes, they could absolutely pick that up from me too.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about sourdough starters, because I was given one, oh my goodness, at the very start of 2020, like right when we went into our first lockdown. And I still have it. I still make the bread, I love it, but my starter has become like a bit of a pet. Have you named yours? No, I haven't yet. But what I have noticed is my little guy is kind of seasonal. You know, when it's warmer weather he will wake up and rise beautifully, but in the cooler weather he's not so happy. He gets a little lazy.
Speaker 2:But it's another thing where you get back to seasonal cooking and I have learned so much from this little guy Sourdough. Teach you to be in tune. You have to be in tune with what's going on around you. And, yeah, during the winter months it's colder, so when you're, when your sourdough um, when the leaven is rising, obviously it's, it's cold and so it's sitting there going. Well, I'm just going to take my sweet time doing this. And then you get to the summer and it's boiling hot. Then it goes oh, look, heat, I can grow. So you have to. You have to work with the elements. You can't dictate the elements. You have to adapt to the elements around you.
Speaker 2:I have, I've had a starter now for about 16 years and the person who gave me some of their starter had had their starter for 30 plus years. So this there are traces of here, the starter that go back nearly five decades, and I bake bread every week. It's a. I find it very nurturing. I love baking bread. Each time you start, you start with a clean slate and it's just this amazing thing and it's so satisfying when having your own bread.
Speaker 1:And let's not forget to talk about eating it, that warm bread with a big blob of Irish butter. Oh, it's delicious, it's heaven.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, lots of salty butter?
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, oh, there's just nothing better. Okay, so your new book, flavor. I love the way you spell the word flavor, which is F-L-A-V-O-U-R, which is how I learned to spell it too. And the photography in the book is gorgeous. And then I read on and I find out you did all the photography. Yes, I did. You are amazing. You've taken on this new skill of being a food photographer, and it was brought about by your love of food. What brought this on, and how did you even start to go about it?
Speaker 2:Again, it's one of these things where you know you think you have a skill until you are shown that there are still many, many, many things that you need to learn. And there are still many things I need to learn. So my publishing team the publisher is a small publisher but one of on the publishing team one of the owners was also an incredible photographer named Mike Valbois, and Mike shot the first nine books and then I would do the pictures at the farmer's market and do the outdoor images. And working with him over the years I learned so much observing him just the tricks of the trade and what one needed to do with regards to lighting and where light should come from and what one needed to do with regards to lighting and where light should come from. And I don't use artificial light myself, I shoot everything in natural daylight. So almost everything is either shot outdoors or next to a window with natural daylight and I have different spots in my house where I know where the light is at certain times of day that's the best light. So I have trellises and tables and stools and boards that I move around to be able to capture that light. A lot of the photography, I think the acceleration in that for me happened again during COVID, because there was no one that I could work with because I'm stuck at home. So I thought, well, I'm going to take all these photographs myself. And from those pictures, the pictures from the dishes during COVID all, not all, but many of those ended up in my, the book that precedes this one, the salad, the second salad book, salad two, and that gave me the confidence to say, right, right, I can do this new project.
Speaker 2:And Flavor was shot. It took a year to photograph because it's it is the story of the flavor of each season. And so I went to the market every week for a year, I mean as I usually do, but I would gather the things and then test dishes and create dishes from what I had gathered at the market and then, assuming those things worked, the dishes worked, then photographed them, styled them. So I didn't work with a team on this, because it was shot in real time as I developed dishes. And it was a lot more work in a way, because when we do the photo shoots for the books and I'm working with the photographer and team, we would shoot six, seven plus dishes a day and here max the absolute maximum that I could do by myself would be three. You have to prepare the dish, style it, set it up, shoot it, break that down and then start again. So obviously I had to be quite organized in terms of if I had three dishes a day and then I'm chasing the light, the last one sometimes.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, I'm running out of light, and what equipment and camera did you use?
Speaker 2:my mother's a photographer and I think just being around her I learned quite a lot about photography. But with Mike I learned a lot too. But I have to say that this is an offshoot of what happened during COVID, because I was doing the Instagram Live shows. Immediately after the Instagram Live I would photograph the dish that I had shown everybody and then post it, and that happened really very quickly, so I was shooting the phone.
Speaker 1:So you just used your regular cell phone that you were using to post on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got amazing results. So then I kept doing this with my phone and I have now researched. You know the best phone to get the results, and I have a phone which has five lenses and I mount it on a tripod and I can set all sorts of different things on the phone, calibrate it to give it the most incredible detail, and so all the flavor was shot on my phone.
Speaker 1:Kudos to you, pascal. You have become a wonderful cook, a wonderful teacher and a wonderful food stylist, but you've created this whole new avenue of creativity for yourself. I love this about getting older that we are continually learning and our curiosity never dies. I think that's one of the things we have to remember Keep being curious.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. Thank you, I mean the styling of food from the very. So I've done all the styling of all the books, um, since the very beginning, and I never went to a sort of you know, I didn't do a food photography styling course or anything. I mean, I've since spoken to different people who say, you know, well, they don't do this now, but in old days people would sort of spray oil on things or a lacquer to make them shiny or to do, and so the food was inedible. If you open the flap, the inside flap of the copy, it says there's a little thing written there. So we shopped, we cooked, we ate, everything in the book was consumed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no artificial anything, there's no substitute.
Speaker 1:When you and I were speaking at the California Club Lunch with an Author event, you shared a sweet story about your friendship with Julia Child. It's the souffle story. Would you share it again please?
Speaker 2:Oh, the souffle story. So I was very, very fortunate to know Julia the last five years of her life and I would cook for her many. I cooked for her many, many times and one day I decided that I would make. I had read somewhere that she liked souffle so I thought I would make her a cheese souffle and I went to pick her up and when I picked her up and she said what's for lunch? And I just said you'll see, it's the prize.
Speaker 2:And we got to the house and the souffle's in the oven and I took her out onto the terrace we were eating outside and went to get the souffle and I brought out the souffle. Her eyes opened wide. She said, oh my God, souffle. And I brought out the souffle. Her eyes opened wide. She said, oh my God, souffle. And I put the souffle on the table and then went back into the kitchen to get the salad and a couple of other things that I was going to serve with it. I was gone, I don't know. I mean less than 90 seconds maybe and I put the salad down on the table than 90 seconds maybe and I put the salad down on the table. Julia had taken the serving spoon and put more than half of the entire souffle on her plate and she was eating it as fast as she could. It was amazing. I was thrilled because she liked the souffle.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not only a wonderful compliment but a wonderful memory to have had of Julia Child. I think that's wonderful. Pascal, one of my last questions. I promise you have had this background with businesses and finances. This must have come in handy when you started Pascal's Kitchen.
Speaker 2:I think the sort of the financial management aspect of any business was not something that I didn't find that challenging, because it was. You know, if you're managing a real estate company and you're managing a cooking school or you know an online way can be more challenging because you become the wearer of many hats, in some cases the wearer of all hats. So you know, one day you're the marketing department, the next day you're the shipping department, the next day you're. You know, you're acquiring things and you're developing products and then you're writing recipes. So there's very little downtime looking product and then you're writing recipes. So there's very little downtime.
Speaker 2:And I think for anybody who runs a small business will know this, you never stop. It's a sort of continual thing. There's an advantage, in a way, if you are employed by someone, because when you, the responsibility for that is not yours. Writing, which is the other part of this business, can be quite solitary. One spends quite a lot of time alone and developing things. So I've spoken to a lot of writers and they say, well, sometimes it can be a little lonely, but and I'm not developing, I mean, the food becomes the character, whereas I'm not developing a novel where there are characters in my head.
Speaker 2:I think about Charles Dickens. He used to read his text out loud and act out the different characters as he was writing, and then he would sit down and write another little bit of text and then stand up and walk around and, you know, have the conversation as Oliver or whoever.
Speaker 1:Well, that's an important part of writing, especially fiction. You have to get into your characters' heads, and reading what you've written out loud I think is essential. I think it was last year. I had Katie Stokes from Edible Santa Barbara on the show and I'm a big fan of the Edible magazines. Can you share a little about Edible Santa Barbara?
Speaker 2:Yes, edible Santa Barbara. I love, like you, I love those magazines. So Edible was started by Tracy Ryder and Carol Topalian. The first one was Edible Ojai. There are now nearly 80 edibles around the country and each of them really focus on regional, local what's happening in food and wine in that region and I started writing for them 16 years ago and I had written in every single issue. I've been fortunate. Some of those pieces have won awards, so I'm very pleased with with that. I think the edible magazines are the perfect representation of local, seasonal food and it really champions that. I mean it is the perfect dovetail to everything that I teach and what I truly believe and also you know what's reflected in in flavor. But they're fabulous magazines. If you go on edible communities you can see they have a map on their website where the edibles are so you can find the edible closest to you. So some states only have one. I think California has at least 10.
Speaker 1:A lot in California. Yes, there are. Pascal. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. It's been great chatting with you via Zoom and in person in Los Angeles, and I wish you all the best writing your new book, which is From Provence to the Pacific. Oh, that sounds super interesting, and you get to travel.
Speaker 2:Yes, a completely different format. It is a multimedia book that is available on Substack. It's a subscription-based book, so a chapter a month goes out and it starts next month. So I'm very excited about this project. But it also ties in again to seasonal eating and really taking advantage of what's right on your doorstep.
Speaker 1:And this new format also includes music that you've chosen, that we can play while cooking the recipes from your book.
Speaker 2:Yes, every single chapter has a playlist and then, if you want me to read the chapter to you, there's also an audio version of every chapter, and then embedded in the text are all sorts of links that enhance the text, and there's photography, and there'll be recipes in every chapter that are part of the story.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, with everything going on, I'm really starting to believe that there's robots of you, because how does one person do everything you are doing?
Speaker 2:No, I'm not AI. I'm not AI. Yes, I think I have got to the point where I need help.
Speaker 1:Yes, I feel your pain. I'm in the same boat.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think you and I are quite similar in that regard. We push the boat out, I think, burning the candles at both ends, but I really I love writing and I like sharing these stories, and I think this right now is I think we need stories, I think we just need that in our lives right now.
Speaker 2:Yes, we will always need stories and circling back to the language of food and being able to you think about the cooking for friends and cooking for people. You are sharing part of yourself. It brings people together. It is well let's hope that dinner parties are here to stay, that we can gather around the table soon.
Speaker 1:Yes, I agree wholeheartedly, Pascal. Thank you for being on the show. I love your book, Flavor, and it's just been a real privilege chatting with you and getting to know you. My pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you for inviting me. You've been listening to my conversation with Pascal Bill from Pascal's Kitchen in Santa Barbara about her new book Flavor. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson-Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, executive assistant to Mandy Adrian Otterhan and graphic design by Francis Farala. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.