This is Amused Bouche, SAVEUR’s food questionnaire that explores the culinary curiosities of some of our favorite people. This interview series will dive deep into their food routines, including dinner party strategies, cherished cookbooks, and the memorable bites they’d hop on a flight for. 

“If I really pay attention and have the time, I’m a 7½. I can’t rush or choose too many things to do at once or I’m a 6, and I really don’t like that,” Slate explained over a Zoom interview from her home in Los Angeles. “If the recipe is simple, I’m an 8. But there are things that intimidate me. I’m working on my feelings about puff pastry. I made a very simple puff pastry with caramelized onions, Gorgonzola, and pears and was like, ‘I just need to deal with this! I’m so afraid of this!’ So I just try and sometimes fail. I love cooking!”

She tends to step out of her comfort zone when cooking for others, even experimenting with new recipes for the first time—like coq au vin—to thank friends. “In my adulthood and as a giver, I find food to be my love language—or one of them. It’s pretty hard for me to choose and pick one thing. I’ve always been more of a woven textile of favorites and moves and things that I do. But one of my favorite things for sure is cooking for people, bringing baked goods, and giving food as a thank you. It’s an ancient way of making an important offering.”

With Passover just around the corner, Slate is gearing up to make and eat a lot of her mom’s charoset, an apple and walnut condiment that was the first thing she ever learned to cook. Below, she shares the unique flavor combinations she piles atop matzo, her Nana Connie’s secret to a tiered whipped Jell-O mold, the “peppy jazz” she jams at dinner parties, and more.

If you could only eat one thing 24/7/365, what would it be?

I guess I’m gonna go with chicken congee right now, just because I really love it and it seems like it would be easy to only eat that? I started making congee when I had my daughter because I read about keeping yourself warm in your body during postpartum recovery. I love savory porridges, risottos, things like that. But what I really love about congee is that there are so many different ways to spice it up and add condiments to make it flavorful and rich. I like to top mine with these preserved bamboo shoots in chile oil that come in a jar, Sriracha, Bragg Liquid Aminos, scallions, and sesame seeds.

What’s the first thing you learned how to cook?

I think the first thing that I really learned how to “cook” was a can of Campbell’s Chicken NoodleO’s Soup! But the first real cooking I remember was making charoset for Passover with my mom. It’s pretty traditional with chopped apples and walnuts, sugar, cinnamon, and a splash of Manischewitz to give it a little edge. I’m pretty free with what I will put charoset on at Passover. I’ll put it on top of chopped liver on matzo or eat it with herring or gefilte fish. I like fruit and fish! I will put horseradish on a weird charoset chopped liver sandwich for a sweet, savory combination with some funk. I’m like Oscar the Grouch, making weird little recipes!

How about your latest kitchen adventure?

Coq au vin, baby! It was my first time making it. My best friend invited me and my daughter over for a movie night and sleepover, and to say thank you, I wanted to make something special. I like making fancy cozy foods that take a long time to show that I was really thinking of them. I like to send a message, and this one was: “I want to spend time making you something decadent. You are so deserving of a fine classic that feels fancy and rather adult. It’s a cozy, stew-y, wine-based, yummy chicken gravy thingy all for you.”

What’s your treat-yourself splurge?

A very, very, very, very spicy and onion-y nam khao tod, the crispy rice salad, from Night + Market Song in L.A. It’s always a special occasion when I eat it, but I’ll eat it any time. It’s a treat because it’s just a biiiit too oniony to have if I want to kiss my daughter or husband. We also love their khao soi!

What’s your most cherished cookbook?

Oh, man. It’s actually a cookbook my mom made for me and my sisters that has all of our family recipes. It’s a three-ring binder from the ’90s with those plastic sheets and many recipes printed out from the computer or that she typed up in a bunch of different fonts. The front of the binder has Xeroxed pictures of all of us, like us all having a milkshake in my grandmother’s bed.

The one I go back to the most is Great-Grandma Rae’s apple cake. I remember it as seeming really complicated and a big deal that it was being made, because it’s a Jewish New Year special that only came once a year. It requires a lot of folding of the batter, which intimidated me, and chopping the apples in a specific way. It was a big deal and couldn’t be messed up! Everyone in my family makes it differently now. I go the extra mile and make a pattern out of the apples on top, and I’ve experimented with sour cream, yogurt, and an extra egg yolk.

Is there a cooking disaster that made you swear off a dish forever?

This is not about me being a bad cook, but more about me being an insane pothead in college. I once hard-boiled an egg for so long that it exploded all over the kitchen of our suite in the dorm. And it reeked. At the time, there was a spread from Playgirl called “The Men of Enron”—after the Enron scandal, which is really weird when I think about it now—and the nude men got splattered with exploded egg. It was a really intense visual, and it smelled so bad. Everyone was so bummed out at me, and it was dangerous, too! I think about it every now and then with great shame, but it’s also funny thinking about naked men covered in eggs.

And I’ll never cross anything off my list forever, but right now, I am somehow just terrible at making omelets? They always come out fat and eggy, and it’s making me feel really bummed out, so I’m taking a break.

Which nostalgic foods from childhood bring you the most comfort? Share a memory, whether it’s a lunch box snack, a family dinner favorite, or a little treat.

I absolutely love a tuna salad sandwich, lots of lemon and mayo in that tuna, on soft bread, with cucumbers. No crusts. This is what my Nana Rochelle would make for us. She used Wonder Bread, but I upgraded to a soft brioche. It warms and breaks my heart a bit.

When you’re playing dinner party DJ, what’s spinning?

I tend to love peppy little jazzy numbers for dinner parties. I really like Blossom Dearie for a dinner party. It’s always what I go to first. I love “If I Were a Bell” and “Moonlight Saving Time.” When I was growing up, we would have parties at our house, and my dad would always put on a jazz record and sit quietly by himself on the couch for a few minutes with a glass of sweet vermouth on the rocks and a lemon, enjoying the moments before the house got busy. I think there’s something in me that likes to continue that setup. It’s just such a good feeling!

What is your biggest entertaining flex to impress guests?

I love making whipped Jell-O molds like my Nana Connie made. Everyone marvels at those! I use three different colors, like she did. She made hers in what we called a giant brandy snifter, which was as big as a punch bowl, but it curved up. She would put the Jell-O in the fridge just until it started to set, about an hour and a half, then whip it in her KitchenAid mixer until it was a solid foam, and pour it in the snifter at an angle so it would climb up the sides and make a shape almost like a tulip. Once that set, she’d make another layer. It took me about two days to make one! She always offered it as a condiment wherever applesauce would be served, like with latkes, and she’d also put half a packet of strawberry Jell-O in regular applesauce so it was always nice and rosy pink—even at Passover!

Tell me about a meal so good you would hop on a flight to relive it.

Yes, yes, yes! I would get on a plane right now to go back to Norway and eat the breakfast buffet at the little bed-and-breakfast at the Baroniet Rosendal. Yellow bread, sour cherry jam, pickled herring, cheeses, strong coffee. I think about it all the time. Every day. It was everything I had ever wanted. Nothing more, nothing less, and so very specific to what makes me happy. The colors and the salty little fish and the perfect cherries. One day I will go back with my daughter and make her a plate and eat beside her and my husband, and I will be so happy that the amount of that future happiness is already slowly reaching me here in the present.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.