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There's nothing like watching a home cook who has been cooking for their entire life do their thing in the kitchen. That’s just one of the pleasures of watching the woman who has become Umma or Korean Mom to millions of social media users. Her daughter, Sarah Ahn , has documented hundreds of cooking sessions with her mom, Nam Soon Ahn and along the way many have learned a cuisine and gotten to know the multi-generational household. Their new cookbook is Umma: A Korean Mom’s Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes . Evan Kleiman: I am such a fan. I am on Tiktok, and I don't love a lot of the cooking videos that go on there, but from when I saw the very first one that I saw of yours, I knew that something was very, very different with your entire approach. Your relationship with your mother is very tender, mega respectful and so intimate, and all of that manages to come through while the viewer can clearly see what's happening in the pot, that is not easy to do. Sarah Ahn: Thank you for recognizing that. I would say our relationship is very close, and I always say the theme of Ahnest Kitchen is the richness and the ordinary in capturing those fleeting but intimate moments. Did you start your blog before you started videoing? Yeah, Ahnest Kitchen first started as a blog, and it's kind of where it all started. I've always loved writing and talking about the Ahnest life, and I shared my recipes there. Then I went onto social media in 2022 or 2023. Your mother is the spine of this whole endeavor, both your video channels and now the cookbook. Tell us about her, what role cooking has played in her life. Has she ever been a restaurateur or worked in a restaurant? And who did she learn from? My mom used to own a restaurant here in Orange County. She had it for a little over 10 years, and it had decent success. She was the cook, the cashier. She did everything, and it provided a roof over our heads for quite some time. But as with anyone who owns a restaurant, it tears apart your family. It's a lot of work. It's not as fun as it sounds. So she was really cooking for survival and making recipes and food that could sell and make people want to come back. It was really a survival type of lifestyle that we look back on and don't want to ever experience again. She most certainly grew up with women, particularly her mother, but back then in Korea, every woman cooked, so she was always surrounded by that. She was always told by her own mother, who was a very well known cook back in Korea, that my mom has sonmat, and sonmat is the "taste of the hands," but in more meaningful translation, it means someone who has a talent for cooking, a natural intuition. "Umma: A Korean Mom’s Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes" documents the countless recipes made in Sarah Ahn’s viral videos with her mother, Nam Soon Ahn. Photo courtesy of America’s Test Kitchen. And someone for whom, once you eat a lot of their food, there is a signature set of tastes. The hand. I love that. Can you take me back to the first time you filmed your mother cooking, and was she super open to it? She was very open to it. She doesn't really notice that the camera is there. That doesn't mean I'm filming her without her consent because she knows I'm there and I'm filming her. But when she's cooking, she's in her element. It's like seeing a very talented dancer dance, and a ballet dancer just do flips and twirls. Their only focus is on that. That's the same exact thing with my mom. When she's cooking, nothing else exists in that moment but her hands and the food and the ingredients in the pot. It's amazing to watch that level of expertise. It's rare. It's really rare. And you're so lucky to get to learn from someone like that. Does she let you help her or has she taught you? Do you feel confident cooking on your own? It's interesting, because in the book, there's an essay in there about her mother. I asked my mom, did you ever learn this recipe from our grandma? And she said, grandma always told me, "I'm not going to teach you this recipe because I don't want you to live a life like this." Back in Korea, when they're always cooking for the means to survive to get through harsh winter months, and when I asked my mom if she could teach me these recipes, she always tells me, "I'm going to teach you these recipes because I want you to have them and for you to have memories of me through these foods. But I hope that you don't have to cook so hard and work so hard in life to have to survive through these foods." So she always has a little bit of hesitance, just because that's kind of our upbringing and background. But she's always been excited to share it with me so that we could share it with the world. "It's like seeing a very talented dancer dance," says Sarah Ahn (right) of watching her mother cook and move around the kitchen. Photo by Kritsada Panichgul. I have to say, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, that some of my favorite videos are when she's packing food up for your brother. For someone who has never seen these videos, can you describe what goes on, the amount, but the love. She's so workman-like, she's so focused and matter of fact and not effusive. But the love that underpins these videos is just so moving. Yeah, those videos, it's basically what my mom packs my brother, who works up to 80 hours a week because he's a resident, is overworked and barely has time to cook. Then there's another series — what my mom packs my dad, who works as an exterior painter, often working under the hot sun. In those videos, she packs them a lot of food, I'm talking a table full of food for them to last a week for my brother or for my dad for his lunch. She wakes up every day at 4:30 a.m. to pack my dad's lunch, and she cooks everything fresh. For my brother, she will spend the three days before he comes home just cooking everything, kimchi from scratch, fried foods from scratch, and she would freeze it for him, and packs all of them in individual containers. He has essentially meal-prepped food for the entire week that was handmade, made with love by my mom, where she worked up to 12 hours that day to pack him those foods. I'd love to talk about the food. We're here in Southern California. Nearly everybody listening who is in Southern California has experienced Korean food. I live very near LA's Koreatown. There are many cuisines that I have tackled in my life, aside from my expertise, Italian food. Korean food, I've made pickles. I love making winter radish pickles. But I have to say that I've been reticent to throw myself in because the idea of having to learn a lot of sub-recipes is something that I just know I don't want to take a lot of time for. So I was wondering if you could throw some recipe ideas from the book at us where everything is included in one recipe so we don't have to start with pickling something a month ago. With the pickled recipes in our book, we also have options where you can buy the pickled product itself first and then just season it from there. But we do make a caveat that if you do that, it's not going to taste as good as when you pickle it yourself. Of course not. But there are a lot of recipes in our book where you can make it from start to finish in that one sitting, like one-pot recipes and whatnot. But we do have a whole pickle section. Which is amazing! The chili pickles. I know that's the first thing that I'm gonna make. Can you describe them? Yes, the chili pickles. So my mom plants these green peppers in our yard every year, and they grow in abundance. My mom pickles them and they last in our fridge for over three years. They're pickled so well with this perfect brine that makes them last a very long time. Once you pickle them, it's in a soy sauce brine, it just marinates it so beautifully. You have the crunch of the pepper but you also have the spice of the pepper then you have this sweet soy sauce blend that's infused into it. My mom pierces the pepper with forks so that the flavor goes into it, and then you can eat it as is, as a pickle, or you can marinate it in this spicy marinade and then enjoy it as a banchan, which is a side dish. I actually brought this marinated banchan pickled green chili peppers to ATK [America's Test Kitchen]. I literally traveled from California to Boston in my suitcase with a huge jar of pickles. The test cooks at Cook's Illustrated were just stunned by its flavors because it was so nuanced and complex. There's nothing like that time, right? Time is the element. Yes, yes, it is. Nam Soon Ahn makes an instant kimchi that is ready to eat within a day. Photo by Kritsada Panichgul. So let's start out with some kimchi but kimchi that we can make and eat pretty soon, not so much that we have to age. Oh, yes. There's instant kimchi. For one, the kimchi that we're most familiar with, the one you get at Korean barbecue and Korean restaurants, that's called Napa cabbage kimchi. In our book, we call it mat kimchi. You can eat it as soon as the next day. It's developed in that way so that you can enjoy it with everything because that's the daily kimchi that we're most familiar with, the one that we have most often. So that's something you can enjoy probably after 24 hours. After that, it's going to ferment a bit. And then after that, there's other kimchi in there, such as perilla kimchi, where you marinate perilla leaves in the spicy blend, and you can enjoy that as soon as possible. As well as cucumber kimchi and whatnot. We also do include kimchi that requires more fermentation if you want that richness taste and the traditional taste. There's a cucumber kimchi that starts with these pickled cucumbers that look extraordinary. Yes, yes. One of the things I love about how your mother cooks is she has so much technique that is very apparent that you often don't see in home cooks. How she deals with fruit and onion juices and how she refers to the onion juices as juices is kind of fascinating to me. Could you talk about the role of the fruit and the onion juices in her cooking? Yes, she uses Fuji apples, onions, and Asian pears to create a lot of marinades and to create a juice out of them that is like this sweetener versus just using sugar when you have fruit juices, she told me, it adds a much more multi-dimensional sweetness to a dish. It's more nuanced. It's more complex. I think maybe someone who is new to cooking can't taste those differences but someone who's appreciative of food will notice those differences when they taste that depth. What she does is she either blends the Fuji apple, onions or Asian pear in a blender, then she puts it through a cloth strainer and juices it out so that you get this pure, smooth juice. I asked her, when I see other online Korean cooks make this, especially the Korean Americans, they don't put it through a strainer. She was like, no, no, no, Sarah. Everyone in Korea, a lot of them are putting it through a cloth strainer because there's a significant difference with it. For example, when you make LA galbi, it's most often you use these fruit juices, and people just blend it up, put the whole blend with the pulp and everything in there. She told me when you do that, what happens is that the meat is going to cook at a different rate, where the meat is going to not be cooked fully but the outside is going to burn because we didn't take out that pulp and all that sugar is crystallizing and burning now. But when you put it through a strainer, you're making it extremely smooth, so that when you cook the meat, the meat is going to cook at a great rate, with that sweetener not burning. I love how there are times in the book where you describe how you think your mother is going a step too far. And you say, why can't you just do it the simpler way? And she sort of takes it as a challenge, and she does a tasting for you, side by side. A/B testing, and she always proves me right. No, she always proves you wrong. Proves me wrong. Right. She always proves me wrong. And I realized, mom is always right, why am I questioning her? The first dish I'll probably make from the book will probably be the spicy braised tofu. Oh, that's a great one. A sauce is made from a blend of Korean pantry ingredients in a spicy braised tofu dish. Photo by Kritsada Panichgul. I love eating tofu in this way, and your version just looks so good. Can you quickly take us through the steps? So spicy braised tofu is, first and foremost, that's a great first pick. It's essentially where you use a firm block of tofu, you season it with a little bit of salt, then you pan fry it until it's just lightly going brown. While you're pan frying it, you make the sauce. It's a blend of Korean pantry ingredients, gochugaru, Korean red pepper flakes, a little bit of sweetener, a little bit of onion and fresh peppers and whatnot. You whisk up the sauce, and as the tofu is cooking, you pour the sauce in. Then you braise the tofu so that the sauce goes into the tofu. The tofu cooks up extremely plush and tender but it's braised with this brilliant gochujang sauce. It's a sauce that my mom tested many times to perfect. By the time that you're done, you just have a whole skillet of just this vibrant red tofu that you didn't know tofu can be enjoyed this way. And whenever we make this, and my followers have made it, they told me they eat the whole thing before it even lands on the plate. I can imagine that. Yes, because it's so addicting. If you can't finish it all, you can put it in the refrigerator and it tastes just as if not better. It tastes better cold. All the fried rice recipes look so good but there's one that you say is the quintessential Korean pantry dish, the egg rice with avocado. Yes, gyeranbap. Every Asian, I think we all have our own variation of it, where you mix soy sauce with rice and some egg, however you like it cooked. But the Korean version, we use sesame oil and soy sauce and whatever leftover rice you have. Scramble your egg, whatever way you like it. We like it scrambled. But my mom's extra touch to it, because we were raised in California, she adds avocados. And that's something we hadn't seen within other Korean households but it goes to show you just how each cook adapts to wherever they are. The next recipe in the book is spinach fried rice. She has a technique where she uses a paper towel to sop up the extra moisture that the spinach throws off. She dabs it in the pan and soaks it up. I think her food at the restaurant must have been amazing because this kind of attention to detail, to concentrate flavors, is very interesting. Yes, and that's also to keep the rice crispy, so that the spinach doesn't dilute the rice. That's a brilliant recipe. Thank you for recognizing that. What does your dad think about all this? He's extremely proud. He's also confused as well, just as my mom is, because they're so confused of how people can relate to us. We live a very, very ordinary life where, like I mentioned earlier, my dad paints and my mom used to be a former restaurant owner. We're not extravagant. We're not doctors or engineers or in these "prestigious careers." I say that in quotes. My parents are confused why people are able to resonate with us. Because in Korea, to not be in this prestigious job, they're often shunned upon. So they're confused with how people are able to celebrate and resonate as ,which is, in a way, heartbreaking, but they're also so happy that they're being recognized for their hard work. I just want to say that I think what you've done is really extraordinary. First of all, your videos are just, I'm gonna start crying, your videos are so moving and wonderful, and watching your mother is such a joy. So that is an amazing accomplishment. Very rarely does a "Tiktok star" translate to a book that is a real cookbook that has heft and rigorous recipes. So kudos really to you and the ATK team. Thank you so much. Spicy Braised Tofu (Dubu Jorim) 두부조림 (doo-boo joh-rim) Serves 4   Total Time: 35 minutes Sarah 세라 This is one of a few banchan I have a hard time not eating completely all by myself. It truly is one of my favorites. Whenever Umma made this sweet and spicy dish, you would find me wandering into the kitchen and slowly nibbling away at it, piece by piece. Before I even realized it, there would be only two or three pieces remaining. Umma would always laugh and affectionately yell, "Ya! Did you eat this all yourself?" To which I would respond, "Yes, sorry, it was too good!" Too good is arguably an understatement, since this dish transforms mild tofu into a flavorful banchan full of irresistible contrasts: the light fried crust of the tofu set against its plush interior, with sweet, spicy, and umami flavors unfolding in your mouth. And, like most banchan, it also happens to taste great either hot or cold. In my family, we don't reheat this if serving leftovers. It tastes just as amazing, if not better, when cold, especially since the flavors have had a chance to be further absorbed by the tofu. Umma's Kitchen Wisdom It's very important to not overcook the tofu. If it's overcooked, the tofu will be tough to chew and won't taste good at all, especially as cold leftovers. Some people prefer to leave the sauce thin so it can be mixed into their rice bowl, so feel free to reduce the sauce in step 4 to your desired thickness. Ingredients 2 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons corn syrup 2 tablespoons maesil cheong (plum extract syrup) 1½ tablespoons soy sauce 1½ tablespoons fish sauce 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil 1½ teaspoons minced garlic 1½ teaspoons gochugaru ½ Fresno chile, ribs and seeds removed, chopped fine ½ jalapeño chile, ribs and seeds removed, chopped fine 2 tablespoons finely chopped yellow onion 1 green onion, chopped fine, divided 1 (14- to 16‑ounce / 397- to 454-gram) block firm tofu ⅛ teaspoon fine salt, divided 1 tablespoon neutral cooking oil Pinch black pepper Directions 1. Whisk the water, corn syrup, maesil cheong, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and gochugaru together in a bowl. Stir in the Fresno chile, jalapeño, yellow onion, and half of the green onion. Set the sauce aside. 2. Rinse the tofu and pat dry with paper towels. Halve the tofu block lengthwise, then cut crosswise into ½‑inch slices. Arrange the tofu in a single layer on a paper towel–lined plate. Pat the tops dry with additional paper towels, then sprinkle with a pinch of salt. 3. Heat the neutral oil in a 12‑inch nonstick skillet over medium ­high heat until shimmering. Arrange the tofu salted side down in the skillet. Sprinkle with the remaining pinch of salt and cook until light golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes per side. 4. Add the sauce and cook, constantly spooning the sauce over the tofu, until the sauce has thickened and begins to coat the tofu, about 2 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat and sprinkle with the remaining chopped green onion and pepper. Serve. (Refrigerate for up to 1 week.) Reprinted with permission from Umma: A Korean Mom’s Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes by Sarah Ahn & Nam Soon Ahn , copyright © 2025.

Recognized by his wide brimmed hat and ponytail, Larry Kandarian has been bringing ancient grains like einkorn, tef, and Ethiopian blue tinge farro from San Luis Obispo to the market for the last 15 years. Putting his mechanical engineering degree to good use, he helped design the USB port for Raytheon back in 1970 and worked on the computer test set for the first space shuttle. Eickhorn, Ethiopian blue tinge farro, and this Tibetan black barley are a few varieties that Kandarian grows on his farm in San Luis Obispo. Photo by Gillian Ferguson. With dirt under his fingernails from farming as a child, Larry was recruited to work for Bodger Seeds by a professor of his from Fresno State. He started designing machinery. He recalls growing flowers across their 57 ranches. "We were growing everything red, white, and blue, because '76 was a bicentennial," he says. He pivoted to grains in 2007 during the recession. Larry always exhibited a willingness to experiment with trials of seeds with approximately 1,000 varieties at Kandarian Organic Farms . Larry's last day at the Santa Monica Farmers Market will be Wednesday, May 14 before retiring to Michoacan with his wife.

Not many people get to have the word "explorer" in their title but Arati Kumar-Rao does. She's an environmental photographer, writer, and artist as well as a National Geographic Explorer. In 2023, she was named one of the BBC 100 Influential and Inspiring Women from around the world. Splitting her time between Bangalore and the Western Ghats mountain range in India, she takes on all sorts of assignments, from documenting the people of the Thar desert to photographing the Sunderbans, the world's largest unbroken mangrove stand. Recently, she wrote a beautiful story for Orion magazine, " Hunting with Dolphins: Night fishing on India's Brahmaputra River ." The story is part of her book, Marginlands: A Journey into India's Vanishing Landscapes . All along the Brahmaputra River, wetlands serve as nurseries for fish. Photo by Arati Kumar-Rao. Evan Kleiman: I'm very intrigued by the title "National Geographic Explorer." What does that mean? Arati Kumar-Rao: Well, it's actually really simple. It just means that I have been given a grant by the National Geographic Society to do a bunch of work. There are different kinds of grants that they hand out every few months. Some of them are research grants, and some of them are storytelling grants. I have a storytelling grant, and I'm currently on the grant documenting forced human migration across South Asia. I can't wait to see the fruit of that work. Tell us about the Brahmaputra, the ninth largest river in the world. Where is it? How long is it? What is its significance to different cultures? So this is a fascinating river. It starts from a glacier in western Tibet, and it flows all the way past Lhasa , which is the capital of Tibet in China. Then it makes this stunning U-turn or bend between two very high mountains in the eastern Himalayas. Then, it comes down south, through the deepest gorge in the world. And it comes into India, in a state of ours called Arunachal Pradesh , where it takes on the name Siang. It's born as the Yarlung Tsangpo in China then it takes on the name Siang when it reaches India. Then, it flows south, and it joins two other rivers, the Lohit and the Dibang , to become this massive river called the Brahmaputra . While the Brahmaputra is the ninth largest river, it is ridiculous to look at, especially in the monsoon. You can't see the other bank. If you're standing on one bank, it's about 18 kilometers wide. It's crazy. That flows through first China and Tibet, so basically through Buddhist areas. Then it flows through India, which are a bunch of Hindu areas and so on. Then it flows into Bangladesh, which is a Muslim country. So it flows through three religions and three countries before it ends in 1,000 tongues where it flows into the Bay of Bengal, and that is the Sunderbans, which is the largest unbroken stand of mangrove forests in the world. Wow, what a story of its geography. In your piece, you went out on this river at night with two fishermen. Where along the river were you? We were in the Indian state of Assam , so it has come down the mountains and it has come into the plains, and that's where we camped by the river. It was in the dry season, so the river was not quite 18 kilometers wide, but it had these huge sandbars that we'd have to walk across to reach some water on which we jumped onto this boat, this fishing boat with these two fishermen. Then we found a sand island, a silt island, actually, on which we camped and then went out fishing on the darkest night of the month. It was just two days before and two days after the new moon, and we went out with them on those dark nights fishing, because that's when they fish. Harpoon fisherman on the Brahmaputra River are a dying breed, says National Geographic Explorer Arati Kumar-Rao. Photo by Arati Kumar-Rao. Can you describe the two men, Lekhu and Ranjan, and what they do? Why do they go out at night? What do they fish for? How do they go about fishing? These guys are traditional harpoon fishermen. It's a dying breed. They're probably the last two of their kind left in India, for sure. They do it only on the very dark nights of the month, and only in the dry season, not in the monsoons, because the river just swells up when it's the monsoon. So not then, but when it is shallow and very clear, is when they go fishing. They fish with this handheld harpoon, which has six prongs, and there's this long, dingy boat, and they hang a small lamp in the front of the boat, which throws an arc of light in front of their boat. The rest of the whole place is dark, if you can imagine it. You can't even see your hand in front of your face. It's that dark. So they use their oar and their harpoon to just kind of tickle the water. They make sounds, and that's what summons river dolphins. They fish with river dolphins. This is something that they have been doing for several generations, and it's not going to last, I think, beyond our generation. Unfortunately, in fact, I just spoke to Lekhu the other day, and he isn't fishing anymore, and he's doing some building work and so on. This is primarily because they are not finding fish in the river anymore. Fish in the Brahmaputra has fallen by 80% to 85% in some places. What a shame. So these Gangetic dolphins, you write so beautifully about the speed and the grace and the power of these dolphins. Can you describe them for us and the role they play in this ballet between the men, the fish, and themselves? So the Gangetic dolphins are river dolphins. They're the oldest cetaceans in the world. They're blind because both the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, the two big river systems in which they're found, are extremely silty rivers, so they can't really see underwater. Therefore, over time, they've lost sight, and they can only barely tell the direction lights are coming from. They use echolocation for everything — for feeding, for mating, for any communication whatsoever, it's echolocation. So they're blind dolphins. They're side-swimming dolphins. It's really funny to see them. They turn on their side and they swim. These dolphins are not like their marine cousins. They don't jump up and spin and fall back into the water. They barely break the surface of the water. They poke their snout out, and they take a gulp, and then they whoosh back in. It's a very gradual, very graceful arc. There was a recent census that was conducted, and the numbers still have to be verified, but we have a few thousand left in the whole river systems in both India and Bangladesh. So these dolphins are the apex predators in the rivers. They're the ones that are like the tigers of the river systems, and they eat fish. Unfortunately, that can also be their undoing, because rivers are used by everyone, and the Ganga Brahmaputra basin is the most populous basin in the world. 800 million people depend upon this river basin. What happens is that there are dams along the river, which fragment the habitat, but more importantly, impound water. So there are times there's very low water and these dolphins love deep water, so they go looking for deep water, which is also where the fish are, therefore, which is also where the fishermen congregate. Very often, these dolphins get stuck in the fishing nets and because they have sharp teeth, the fishing nets get wound around their snouts, which are pretty long as well, and then they thrash about, which makes it much worse. A lot of them die in fishing nets. So that's a pity, but they're beautiful creatures. They're actually India's national aquatic animal. You write about the beauty of being out on this boat with these fishermen. Can you dig into that a little bit, this human/animal symbiosis in this way of fishing? What happens is that the dolphin and the fishermen both want the fish in the river, right? When the fishermen call the dolphin by making those sounds on the water with their oars, the dolphins come to the boat. They're predators, right? So the fish are afraid of the dolphins and they're running away from the dolphins. The dolphins are coming towards the boat. So of course, the fish are also coming towards the boat, because they're running away from the bus. It's almost like they're chasing the fish towards the boat, and the fishermen then harpoon those fish. But as a reward, they leave a few fish for the dolphin to get as well. That night that you spent fishing alongside these dolphins on the Brahmaputra, how long did you spend out there and how many fish did you have at the end to show for it? Not too many fish to show for it. We spent three days of about two to three hours each. The first day we didn't even have any. The second day, I think we had one fish. Then the third day, we had two fish, or something like that. I forget now exactly, but it was the number of fish you could count on the fingers of one hand and you would still have fingers left over, which is the real pity, because that was fishing season, and there should have been fish in the river. We just have seen a huge drop off in riverine fish thanks to river mining upstream, because that takes away the habitat where the fish breed, as well as wetlands, which are also habitats where the fish breed. So both those are endangered spaces, which are affecting the wild fish in these rivers. Gangetic dolphins are the oldest cetaceans in the world and are blinded by the silt in the Ganga and the Brahmaputra rivers. Photo by Arati Kumar-Rao.

Ari Kolender has been shucking shellfish for the last 20 years. He also happens to operate two of Los Angeles's most popular seafood restaurants, Found Oyster in East Hollywood and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill in Eagle Rock. His inspiration for the home cook comes in the form of How to Cook to the Finest Things From the Sea . Evan Kleiman: I love how you say that to have success with seafood and fish at home, "Do less." Can you elaborate? Ari Kolender: The whole idea of writing this book was to make sure that people understood they don't need to do a bunch of crazy things or buy a bunch of crazy ingredients to make good fish and shellfish. You're taking a good product and making sure you don't mess with it too much in the way of handling it as well as how much you need to put on top of it or with it. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between the flesh of fish and seafood and other land-based proteins? In regards to "do less," the flesh of fish is much more delicate than a piece of steak or chicken or a pork chop, way less forgiving. So especially if you're taking something that is whole then butchering it down — taking the skin off, taking the pin bones out — you've handled it so much that you just need to be delicate. You need to take your time. Then when you're cooking it, especially in the pan, turning it over multiple times, on a grill or in a pan, it's gonna just start tearing at the flesh. Whereas with a piece of steak, keep on going back and forth to get that nice sear. Why is cooking method important to consider when you're shopping for your fish or seafood? Good question. [In the book], we broke it down in a way that we talk about how you're going to cook something and then decide what you're going to buy. That's all to say that if I know I'm going to go outside, it's a beautiful summer evening, and I'm going to light up the grill, I'm going to look for something that's maybe a little bit more of a stickier texture than a nice, soft white fish per se. There's a recipe in the book called Swordfish Hemingway that's built perfectly for that nice summer evening, so you can cook the whole thing on your grill outside. If you just take a little pan out there with you, that flesh will hold up to a nice, high sear. You want to get good grill marks on that kind of fish, but if you take, let's say, a rockfish or a cod and put it on there, you can't grill that at that same high temperature. It's just going to tear at that flesh. Tell me how the Hemingway happened. What does that mean in terms of the name of that swordfish recipe? It's a play off of an old recipe from a classic Charleston cookbook, Charleston Receipts . This is a collection of high society folks over time that put their favorite things in there. There's one recipe called Chicken Hemingway, so it's a play on that. The idea for the chicken is that overnight you marinate it in some sherry, butter, garlic, and thyme, and the next day, you stick it in the oven and bake it. So we have taken the flavors from that and made a nice sherry butter sauce with garlic and thyme, some shallots, and we make that sauce on the side while cooking the swordfish. I think one thing that prevents people from cooking more fish and seafood at home is they worry about how to source it, where to get it. What are three simple ways to be sustainable when we're sourcing fish and shellfish? You should always be looking to buy something that was caught in American waters, they're the most regulated waters in the world. If you can't find that, then staying in this hemisphere, or this region is best. I think you always want to check to see too, what's caught locally, if you have that option. The other thing is just being conscious of price. I'm not saying that you can't find a good deal on seafood, but usually, if something is really inexpensive, something bad probably happened somewhere to get it to you that way. Yeah, I really feel that fish and seafood is an example of you get what you pay for. Yes, the dollar oyster bar is never a good deal long term. Let's talk about your Five Layer Crab Dip because it looks like a perfect party trick, and it seems relatively simple. Can you describe it? This is one of those things, I like to say that we're giving away some of the secrets here, this has been on Found Oyster's menu since the beginning. It's so good, we haven't bothered changing into another crab dip. We spike Kewpie mayonnaise with, if you can find it, a bitter juice from Japan called kabosu (it kind of tastes like grapefruit and lime; it's very bitter but has great acid) as a trick to circumvent having to find something crazy and fancy. You can achieve the same effect by juicing limes, but also grating some of the zest into the mayonnaise. I like to take the zest a little farther than most people and get that white pith because that bitterness helps in this umami flavor profile with the sweetness of the crab and the spice of the togarashi. And we supreme Meyer lemons and add chives on top. Those are your five components to the dip. Supreming the lemon segments is probably the trickiest step. I would imagine. We put a cute little diagram in there to show people, if they want to give it a shot. But if you can get the skin off of the lemon, you could also cut them into pinwheels and just deseed it, cut it, chop it up as you'd like from there. I think people should learn how to supreme. It's not that hard. That is also a good party trick. It's really fun once you get into it. I am a huge tinned fish aficionado. I tend to get insane and spend way too much money. So right now, I probably have 30 cans of different kinds in my cupboard. How long does tinned fish last in the pantry? I've never seen it expire. I've opened stuff after 10 years, and it's been potentially better. Yeah, there are some people who pride themselves on aging it. I would say occasionally turn it over. That's a great tip. Ari Kolender didn't grow up eating seafood but he's been cooking it for the past 20 years. Photo by Justin Chung. Make me lunch using tinned fish. This is the easiest thing to do, and honestly, I love to eat tinned fish for breakfast. I make just simple bread, butter, and anchovies all the time. One of my favorite versions of this in the city is at Gjusta . I cannot go there without ordering that dish. But there are so many ways to use tin fish. There's one recipe that's in the stovetop section that is some Rancho Gordo beans that have been braised long and soft. We add cans of mussels and escabeche to it at the end. It's kind of one of those things that the flavor from everything else that's in the can, not just the mussels, amps up the beans so much, it's really hard to recreate that. That sounds so delicious. Back to lunch, there's another recipe in the book that's very simple and easy, and it's just your basic avocado toast but introducing a can of tomato sardines to the top of it, a few olives, and some dill and parsley scattered over as well. I love this. This is giving me inspiration, because, to be perfectly honest, sometimes I just eat it over the sink. So tomato pudding is a classic southern dish. How do you doctor yours up? We bring the anchovies back for this one. This might be one of my favorite recipes in the book. It's very special. It is not really done very often, and I've only seen it in one place growing up, a restaurant called the Hominy Grill , that is no longer around, but they do have a cookbook, and there's a version of this in there. I started cooking it during the pandemic, and my wife and I loved it so much that we just always had a cast iron full of it, and we'd make it as a side to dinner, but then bring it back out for breakfast and put an egg on it. Soon enough, the anchovies came out. So this recipe calls for filets of brown anchovies to dot the top of the pudding. Yum. One of the things I really love about your book is what you call cooking "en papillote," cooking in paper. It's such a great technique for fish cooking, and it makes things super foolproof. What is your spring edition of cooking in paper? For our spring edition, we're relying on all the things I love — snap peas, asparagus, olives. To give it a little bit of punch, we add some evergreen things like oregano and garlic as well. The best part about this is that you can make it your own. Anything that you can put in there is going to do very well. It's funny, because this edition is the most cooked thing out of the book right now. I see people doing it every week, including my parents and my in-laws. My father-in-law had us over for dinner a couple weeks ago and surprised us by making his own version of this recipe. And he absolutely crushed it. He did such a good job. I love that. We're airing this interview on Mother's Day weekend, so if someone listening has a seafood-loving mom, what would you recommend they make for her? Oh, yay, mom! Congrats. As much as I hate to be a broken record, I do think the fish in paper is a great choice. I say that too, because the last thing you want to do on Mother's Day is be in the kitchen and not be able to hang with mom. This is something that is just all prep work. It's fast, it's easy. You can make these early in the morning, wrap them up, put them in the fridge, then when mom comes over and you're ready to eat, you put them in your oven for 15 minutes and it's dinner time. What do you serve with it? How would you set that up as a meal? My favorite thing to do is a nice, big salad that has nuts and shaved vegetables and a ton of herbs in there, a nice, punchy dressing, and a starch is great, like a rice or a potato, whether it's like a smashed potato or just boiled potatoes. I like to think of anything that's on the table could be put into that package once it's opened up. And you can slide the potatoes or the rice around and catch some of that jus from the fish and the olive oil and the lemon. "How to Cook the Finest Things From the Sea" is divided into techniques and applications. Kolender suggests you decide on a cooking method before you buy your seafood. Photo courtesy of Artisan Books. FISH IN PAPER Baking fish in a parchment paper packet is one of the easiest and most forgiving ways to cook a piece of fish. Plus, you can load your packet up with seasonal vegetables to make a complete one-pan meal. The pouches can be prepared up to about 3 hours in advance and chilled in the refrigerator. After that, all you have to do is roast them in the oven and then transfer the pouches directly to dinner plates. It creates a little bit of a show when everyone cuts open the parchment and watches the steam escape (while also keeping the meal warm until right before you eat). All the following recipes easily double or triple for a crowd, with multiple sheet pans placed in the oven. You can easily make your own version, using the recipes as a template—just keep in mind that you will always want to use vegetables that respond well to very light cooking. And avoid starchier ingredients like potatoes. FISH IN PAPER, spring edition Let’s face it, spring is the sexiest season for vegetables. Fresh green spring vegetables taste especially flavorful after a long winter. This version of fish baked in paper might be one of my favorite recipes, highlighting the best of spring with green garlic, snap peas, basil, asparagus, and Meyer lemon. The juices at the bottom of the parchment are so delicious that a hunk of crusty bread to soak them up is borderline mandatory. Ingredients 1 Meyer lemon (or regular lemon), plus wedges for serving 12 snap peas, stems removed 12 pitted Kalamata olives 1 bunch asparagus (about 10 spears), tough ends trimmed, halved crosswise 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling 1-ounce (30 g) green garlic, bulb and tender greens (see Notes), sliced into 1/4-inch (6 mm) ring (about 1/4 cup) 2 thyme sprigs 1 teaspoon fresh oregano leaves 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes Flaky sea salt 2 skinless fish fillets (6 ounces/170 g each), such as cod, halibut, rockfish, or other mild and flaky fish (see Notes) 4 basil sprigs Freshly ground black pepper Crusty bread, for serving Directions Slice the lemon, creating 4 rounds that are each 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick, and remove the seeds. Set the slices aside. In a medium bowl, combine the snap peas, olives, asparagus, olive oil, green garlic, thyme, oregano, pepper flakes, and 1 teaspoon flaky sea salt. Give it all a good toss. Cut two parchment sheets that are each about 14 inches (35 cm) long. Fold the sheets crosswise down the center, then open them back up. Season each piece of fish with salt, then lay each fillet just offset from the center crease. With a brush or your hands, lightly coat the fillets with some olive oil. Top each fish with a lemon slice and the basil, then evenly divide the vegetable mixture between the two pouches, allowing some of the pieces to sit on top of the fish and others to fall to the side. Pour any remaining juices from the bottom of the bowl over the fish as well. Fold the parchment back over the fish, then fold that first corner (from one edge of the folded crease) into a short, hard edge (see How to Fold a Parchment Paper Packet, page 155). Continue folding short, hard creases all the way around in a semicircle, until you get to the last corner. Fold that corner down, to keep it airtight. Place the pouches on a sheet pan and cook them right away, or transfer the entire sheet pan, with the pouches, to the refrigerator until you are ready to cook and serve but no longer than 3 hours. When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Roast the fish until the parchment has puffed up and the fish is cooked through and has an internal temperature of 120° to 130°F (49° to 54°C), about 10 minutes. Place the pouches directly on serving plates and warn people to be careful of the steam as they open them. Serve with flaky sea salt, pepper, lemon wedges, and crusty bread alongside. NOTES The recipe easily doubles to serve 4. If you don’t have green garlic, you can substitute 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced, plus 2 whole scallions, sliced into 1/4-inch (6 mm) rings. For a full list of possibilities, see Mild and Flaky Fillets (page 24). Excerpted from How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea by Ari Kolender (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2025. Photographs by Justin Chung. FISH IN PAPER, summer edition The best of summer comes alive here, playing off the flavors of a classic Southern succotash. Corn, shishito peppers, okra, and Fresno chiles wilt in parchment with the fish, all while cherry tomatoes, basil, and summer squash get marinated raw and then poured over at the end, creating a bright, fruity, refreshing, herbaceous, and lightly spicy meal that is perfect for the warmer months. Ingredients 1 medium zucchini or summer squash, about 12 inches (30 cm) long (4 ounces/115 g), sliced into thin coins 10 cherry tomatoes, halved 8 large fresh basil leaves, sliced into a 1/4-inch (6 mm) chiffonade, plus 2 whole leaves for the fish 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the fish 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes Flaky sea salt Kernels from 1 ear of corn 7 to 8 medium shishito peppers (about 2 ounces), sliced into 1/2-inch (13 mm) coins 7 to 8 medium okra pods (about 2 ounces), sliced into 1/2-inch (13 mm) coins 1/2 Fresno chile or red jalapeño, seeded and finely diced, or an additional 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 1 large or 2 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced 2 skinless fish fillets (6 ounces/170 g each), such as cod, halibut, rockfish, or other mild and flaky fish (see Notes) Lemon wedges, for serving Directions In a medium bowl, combine the zucchini, cherry tomatoes, basil chiffonade, 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the lemon juice, and pepper flakes. Season it with a healthy pinch of flaky sea salt. Give it all a nice toss and then set it aside to marinate and soften while you cook the fish. In a large bowl, combine the corn, shishitos, okra, Fresno chile, garlic, and remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. Season with a pinch of flaky sea salt and stir it until well combined. Cut two parchment sheets that are each about 14 inches (35 cm) long. Fold the sheets crosswise down the center, then open them back up. Season each piece of fish with salt, then lay each fillet just offset from the center crease. With a brush or your hands, lightly coat the fillets with some olive oil. Evenly divide the corn mixture between the two pouches, spooning it over the fish. Place a whole leaf of basil on each piece of fish, then pour any remaining juices from the bottom of the bowl over the fish as well. Fold the parchment back over the fish, then fold that first corner (from one edge of the folded crease) into a short, hard edge (see How to Fold a Parchment Paper Packet, page 155). Continue folding short, hard creases all the way around in a semicircle, until you get to the last corner. Fold that corner down, to keep it airtight. Place the pouches on a sheet pan and cook them right away, or transfer the entire sheet pan, with the pouches, to the refrigerator until you are ready to cook and serve but no more than three hours. When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Roast the fish until the parchment has puffed up and the fish is cooked through and has an internal temperature of 120° to 130°F (49° to 54°C), about 10 minutes. Place the pouches directly on serving plates and cut them open carefully. Being mindful of hot steam, peel back the paper. Dividing evenly, spoon the zucchini and tomato salad over the tops, pouring in any remaining juices. Serve immediately, with lemon wedges. Excerpted from How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea by Ari Kolender (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2025. Photographs by Justin Chung.

By day, Tyler Harper teaches environmental studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. By night, he dons a wetsuit, often during storms, and heads out into the turbulent surf to fish for striped bass. It's an extreme sport known as "wetsuiting." He wrote about the dangerous, secretive world of extreme fishing for The Atlantic. Evan Kleiman: I'm eager to find out about this wetsuiting. What exactly is it, and what drew you to it? Tyler Harper: Wetsuiting is a form of surf fishing for striped bass, which involves wearing a wetsuit, as the name implies, which allows you to access deeper water than traditional waders, which will fill up. And so you're usually either deep-wading or often swimming to offshore rocks in the ocean to fish from, that let you access a little bit deeper water and faster currents, where hopefully you can reach some bigger fish. And what drew you to it? Was it a dare? No, I've always been a very serious fisherman. When I started fishing for striped bass, I became really obsessed with it very quickly. And soon learned that very serious people were wetsuiting and that kind of thing appealed to me. It mostly takes place at night, which is also a little easier to make happen around my work and family schedule, so it immediately appealed. Although I'm an academic, I suppose I have a bit of an adrenaline streak so that that factor appealed to me. That's the part that just makes me insane in my mind. It's bad enough imagining myself swimming out to rocks to fish but the nighttime thing, wow. That is extreme. Tell us a bit about the history of the sport. How and when did it originate? Wetsuiting began in Montauk, New York, in the 1960s and quickly took off in Montauk, which for many decades, remained the epicenter of the sport, but also spread throughout New England pretty quickly as well. Now, it's relatively popular. I say relatively. I mean in the grand scheme of things there are not a lot of people doing this. But you know, it became more popular throughout the Northeast. Do you only fish for striped bass? Are you looking for other kinds of fish too? At other times of the year, I do some freshwater fishing and fly fishing and so on, but the wetsuiting is just for striped bass. Let's talk about striped bass. What's so special about them? Do they have a particular migratory pattern that lends to catching them by this activity? Striped bass are a migratory fish. They arrive in New England, let's say early May. They tend to depart in late October, early November. You know, I think they are special fish in a number of ways. They have large tails, which allows them to swim in really rough surf conditions and even tropical storms and hurricanes. So they have a feeding advantage when the water is really rough. And the big striped bass are nocturnal. They like storms and inclement weather. So the best fishing is generally when it's the most unpleasant out. They’re really challenging fish to pursue for that reason but they're also a really remarkable animal. There's something quite incredible about fishing the front edge of a hurricane, and the water looks like there certainly couldn't be anything living in it, and yet there are striped bass feeding with abandon. Take us through an evening of you going out there. Tell us what happens in a more granular way. Sure. Partly that depends on what kind of territory you are fishing. If you are fishing in Maine, we have a varied topography. I don't just fish in Maine. I fish in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, too. In some places, you're fishing from cliff faces or ledges where you're not actually in the water. Often, you are fishing from offshore sandbars that you are wading out to. Other times, you're fishing in what we call boulder fields, which are boulder strewn parts of the coastline where you are swimming out to these offshore rocks that you can fish from. The average night, striped bass, they feed in ways that are pretty tide-dependent. So when you start fishing is often dictated by the tides. In general, I would say I'm usually leaving to go fish sometime around nine or 10 at night, usually getting back, two or three in the morning. But if the fishing is really good, sometimes that's fishing until the sun comes up. Myself, I try to fish four nights a week, five, if I can. It's one of these things where you really have to go all in or it's not worth doing. Striped bass are what we would call pattern-dependent, which means they're going to be at a specific place at high tide for a very specific reason, at a specific place at low tide for a very specific reason. Those reasons are pretty hard to figure out unless you're fishing a ton. So it's the kind of thing where you need to be going a lot to figure out where the fish are, and the returns are exponential. The more you fish, the better you're going to do, generally speaking. Brandon Sausele wears a wetsuit and wades or swims out to offshore rocks in shark-filled waters —­ almost exclusively at night. Photo by Peter Fisher. I'm imagining you out there, let's say, in a boulder field, standing kind of precariously on the edge of one of the rocks. After you manage to catch the fish, you haven't schlepped a creel or something to put it in or a cooler with you have you? How do you get the fish back to where you can pack it away? Oh, one of the interesting things about this sport is that most of us who wetsuit, I would say 99% of us catch and release everything. It's really just about the experience. The other piece of this is that most of us are fishing for trophy class striped bass. Really large fish and striped bass are regulated by what's called a "slot limit," which means you can only keep fish within a certain size, length, roughly 28-31 inches. Most of the fish people who are wetsuiting are targeting fish in the 40-inch plus range, generally speaking. We often don't catch smaller fish as well, but the size fish that you can eat are generally not the size fish we're targeting. And most people who do this are pretty conservation minded. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the least dangerous and 10 being the most dangerous, where would you rank wetsuiting? It's certainly not as dangerous as something like free solo mountain climbing or something like that but it's definitely more dangerous than your average fishing. The parts of it that are scary are actually different than the parts of it that are risky. Being out on a sandbar 150 yards offshore in the middle of Maine's white shark season, the fog rolls in, and it's really quiet and it's just you up to your chest, it gets spooky very quickly. But in the grand scheme of things, the risk of a shark attack is probably really minimal. The risk of getting caught in a rip current and drowning, or you've been fishing for five days straight, and you've got a cumulative, you know, 15 hours of sleep over those five days, and then you have to drive 45 minutes home, those are the risks. People have died during the sport. The risks are more associated with, I think, drowning and driving than, you know, toothy critters in the night. But, yeah, it's certainly not without its risk. If I had to put a number on it, I'd probably give it a 7. The striped bass population collapsed back in the 1980s and you write that many people think we're on the verge of another collapse, if we're not there already. Can you speak to that a bit? Yeah, absolutely. The striped bass have been historically pretty poorly managed, and they're being very poorly managed right now. The governing body that manages them, because they're a migratory fish, it's called the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission , which has the very tough job of navigating stakeholders who have very different interests. You have recreational fishermen like me, who are trophy fishermen, who mostly catch and release everything. You have recreational fishermen who are meat fishermen who are catching fish in the hopes of feeding their family. You have commercial fishermen whose livelihood in no small part, depends on harvesting this fish. Striped bass represent, quite literally, a multi-billion dollar industry. They're really hard to regulate for that reason because everyone, people like me, for example, would love to see the striped bass declared a game fish, which means they can't be harvested or sold for food. But then, very understandably, you have other folks who make their living on this fish, so it's really hard to please everyone. For that reason, the ASMFC has tended away from heavy-handed regulation, which it's looking like is increasingly necessary. There have been a lot of poor spawning years for the striped bass related to a number of factors — pollution, climate change and so on — so it looks like they're considering some emergency measures right now. I hope they take it seriously, because this has happened before, in the '80s, and it would be a shame for history to repeat itself.

James Mangold — freshly minted Best Director Oscar-nominee — occupies a fascinating space in the Hollywood firmament. A contemporary of auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson, and fellow CalArts alum Tim Burton, Mangold has carved his own niche which can best be described as “elevated journeyman.” Mangold moves deftly between genres, delivering films whose strongest connective tissue lies within the effectiveness of his filmmaking, and just how good he is at telling stories in a visual language. Mangold directed a 24-year-old Angelina Jolie to a scene stealing performance (and Best Supporting Actress Academy Award win) in 1999’s Girl Interrupted. He did the same for Reese Witherspoon in 2005’s Walk The Line. His 2017 entry into the X-Men cinematic universe — the stealth Western Logan — is often cited as a pinnacle of the superhero genre. And his 2024 Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown overcame a litany of advance skepticism to emerge as a box office hit — and nab eight Oscar nominations in the process. It was also critically acclaimed and met with a notable degree of approval from Dylan’s famously opinionated fanbase. More: Director James Mangold + costumer Arianne Phillips on their big designs for ‘A Complete Unknown ’ For his Treat, Mangold recommends the “glorious and beautiful” 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success; a movie that he believes that everyone should seek out, but especially writers, directors, and actors. He also offers a glimpse into his mentorship with the film’s director Alexander McKendrick. This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity. Hi, this is Jim Mangold, and this is The Treat: [the 1957 film] Sweet Smell of Success, written by Clifford Odette and Ernest Lehman, directed by my old mentor Alexander McKendrick, starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis — and many others — with music by Chico Hamilton and Elmer Bernstein. It is a swinging film. It has taught me so much about writing, about storytelling, about characterization… about how you don't need anyone in your movie to be good, to make them compelling. You can [just] make a movie about desire, need, avarice, greed, longing… I was 17 [at first viewing] because I’d just gotten to CalArts up in Valencia, and Sandy McKendrick — the director — was there in residence. It was shown in the first week as kind of representative of his work. I saw that movie, and I was like: “I gotta work with that guy.” He only worked with master's students, and I was fresh out of high school, but I clawed and I scratched until I ended up becoming his teaching assistant for several years. He was a really great friend and a huge and important teacher in my life. It is also just beautiful black and white locations in New York City in the late 50s — [shot by cinematographer] James Wong Howe — it is a glorious and beautiful film. I can't advocate it enough if you're a writer, if you're a director, or an actor. It's also, in my opinion, Tony Curtis’ best movie because he's playing someone [that’s] probably close to something going on for him inside… Burt Lancaster, as well, is just demonically powerful in the movie. And that's it, that's my Treat.

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have been writing and directing together for close to two decades. They gained early acclaim for indie films including Half Nelson and Sugar. In 2019, they moved confidently into the MCU with the blockbuster Captain Marvel. They also were executive producers on the FX series Mrs. America, for which they received a Primetime Emmy nomination. Their latest project is Freaky Tales, inspired by 1987 Oakland and starring Pedro Pascal, Jay Ellis, and a little known actor named Tom Hanks (in a cameo). The duo tells The Treatment about getting rapper Too Short — whose song inspired the title — to appear in the movie, the importance of making the film in the Bay, and about creating different looks for each of the movie’s chapters.

The latest film releases include Clown in a Cornfield, Friendship, Fight or Flight, and Absolute Dominion. Weighing in are Witney Seibold, senior writer at SlashFilm and co-host of the Critically Acclaimed Network, and Katie Walsh, film reviewer for The Tribune News Service and The Los Angeles Times.

Serving pancakes to mom on Mother’s Day has to be one of the most universally embraced American holiday traditions. There are a few reasons for this. Both adults and children love them, and they’re easy to make. I enjoy pancakes because there are so many types: tall stacks that are fluffy and nearly cake-like; flatter, super tender, moist, and buttery; or diner pancakes that sit somewhere in the middle. You can make them from all-purpose flour or add other grains like cornmeal or buckwheat. They can be silver dollar size (my childhood preference) or a single baked pancake. Buttermilk pancakes are probably the most popular with their tender crumb and slight tang that pairs so well with sweet syrups. Because pancakes are made from so few pantry ingredients, it’s important to dial in the measurements so your ratios are correct for the result you want. And little techniques make big differences. For example, you can take a buttermilk pancake recipe and change it completely into mega tall, fluffy pancakes simply by adding an egg and beating the whites. The additional air beaten into the whites, which are then folded into the batter, creates a pancake double the thickness with more fluffy crumb. If you want them really tall, use English muffin rings to create height. King Arthur has a wonderful tutorial on this technique. I’m partial to Swedish pancakes . They are thin like crèpés, but softer and more delicate. I love how eggy and buttery they are. And given my love of the soft, fresh cheese, Little Dom’s blueberry ricotta pancakes have a big following too. The cheese adds a hit of protein and a welcome creaminess. But one of my all-time favorite versions is Friends and Family’s Roxana Jullapat’s baked buckwheat pancake from her book Mother Grains. She takes the cake part of the name literally and starts the pancake on the stovetop, then finishes it in the oven. It’s tall and fluffy with a lot of texture from the exterior and extra flavor from the bit of buckwheat flour in the batter. Blueberry ricotta pancakes take things up a notch. Photo credit: Shutterstock. If you want to make pancakes with small children but don’t like a lot of mess, why not streamline the operation with a mix? There is no shame in that. While there are innumerable mixes in every supermarket, King Arthur has mixes for buttermilk pancakes, diner style, gluten-free, and keto. Their buttermilk mix is consistently rated No. 1, only requires the addition of water, and is available at most local grocery stores. Add some berries and real maple syrup or a compote of fresh blueberries, and you’re golden.

The latest film releases include Clown in a Cornfield, Friendship, Fight or Flight, and Absolute Dominion. Weighing in are Witney Seibold, senior writer at SlashFilm and co-host of the Critically Acclaimed Network, and Katie Walsh, film reviewer for The Tribune News Service and The Los Angeles Times. Clown in a Cornfield From director Eli Craig (Zombieland and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil), a teenage girl and her dad move to a small town and learn it’s socially fractured, economically troubled, and threatened by a homicidal clown. Walsh: “It's pretty fun. It's very reverent towards the material. But it's not doing anything new. … There's a clown. He's in a cornfield. Mayhem ensues. But it's pretty straightforward in terms of the genre.” Seibold: “I was a teenager when Wes Craven’s Scream came out in the mid-90s, and that was really trying to deconstruct slashers. Slashers were done at that point. And for a brief period, there was this deconstructionist slasher wave where we’re just picking apart slashers. … And it's really unusual to come to something like Clown in a Cornfield and find that they're just doing it again, there's no self-reference, there's no self-awareness. We're just doing something that we would have seen in the 1980s, just with a little bit more of a teen-friendly vibe. It's still very bloody. It's still very gory. … There's one or two twists, but they're not so dramatic that they're even notable. … It is a slasher movie. It's right up the middle. I want there to be more cleverness in my slasher movies. I want there to be creative kills. And this doesn't have enough of that. It's not scary, it's not clever, it's just blah.” Fight or Flight Josh Hartnett is a former CIA agent who’s tasked, by his former boss and ex-girlfriend (Katee Sackhoff), with finding “the ghost” on a plane. However, he learns that his target’s location has been leaked to all the world’s assassins. Seibold: “Every single person on this flight is a very colorful, cartoony assassin who wants to locate and kill the ghost before Josh Hartnett can protect them. This seems like pretty standard action movie fare, just a little bit overblown with the number of assassins in it. The tone of this film, however, is really broad and slapstick. It's really cartoonish. The violence is super over-the-top. And Josh Hartnett is playing his character as a put-upon slapstick everyman who just can't believe how bad his day is getting. … Your mileage is going to vary, whether you find the slapstick violence really brisk and exhilarating, or really affected and stylized and obnoxious. … I think Josh Hartnett is really the rock of this. He is the one who not only is capably handling the action, but really capably handling the comedy.” Walsh: “The pilots are an afterthought. … I'm very here for the Josh Hartnett renaissance that's been happening in the past few years with Trap and Oppenheimer, and he just really holds it together. … There's a flight attendant on the flight played by Charithra Chandran, who was in Bridgerton season two. And I think she has really fun chemistry with Josh Hartnett. So she's also a standout for me.” Friendship Comedian Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave) plays a suburban dad named Craig who becomes obsessed with his new neighbor (Paul Rudd) who’s a local weather forecaster. But then Craig gets platonically dumped. Walsh: “I would highly recommend seeing this in the theater. … Seeing this movie with a crowd of people is absolute joy. It is extremely funny. … It's definitely a dark comedy or a weird comedy. … It does not go into thriller, scary vibe. I think that the trailer is trying to position it as this friendship horror movie, like, ‘Oh my god, I made a social faux pas. How devastating is that?’ … It's very relatable in the sense that anybody who's tried to make friends as an adult, or felt that they did something wrong or had an awkward moment in friendship, it blows that up to epic proportions. I think it's also tackling this idea of the ‘male loneliness epidemic,’ how adult men who are married and have kids and families are maybe not socializing with each other enough, and the struggle that is to find friends as an adult. … So I think that as much as the film is over-the-top, it's also deeply human and very relatable. This is one of the best movies of the year.” Absolute Dominion In 2063, world religions send representatives to compete in a martial arts tournament to decide which faith will govern humanity. This stars Patton Oswalt, Junes Zahdi, and Julie Ann Emery. Seibold: “This character … played by Désiré Mia is going to fight for the institute of humanism. He is the atheist fighter, and he is the underdog of this story. Will the atheist be able to fight all of these religions? It has a super persecution complex. … And it has all of these straw man arguments that it likes to make against and for religion. Nothing comes together just because the film is so unbearably cheap. All of the exteriors were done on Photoshop-style computer animation programs. The gigantic stadiums where the fighters are supposed to fight are clearly just like a local dojo with mats on the floor, and there's like 30 people surrounding the mat. … There are so few fight scenes that we're just wading through all of these really dull conspiracy scenes where people are snarling at the idea of religion. And we're trying to approach a serious topic about the role of faith in the modern world, but we never really get there.” Walsh: “This is written and directed by Lexi Alexander. And I'm always going to root for Lexi. … She's very outspoken, and in a way that has made it hard for her, I think, to get things financed in Hollywood. But what's interesting is that she started as a kickboxing champion martial artist. … She also played Princess Katana in a traveling Mortal Kombat show, so it's interesting that this is a Mortal Kombat-esque movie but with a fighting tournament and everything. She shoots the fighting really well, but the budgetary limitations on this severely hold this film back, and also, I think the inelegance of the script.”

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When you ask Chat GPT or another AI a question, how do you know the answer is accurate? Or propaganda from a foreign government. Russian disinformation is now shaping some answers from major AI chatbots operated by OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Microsoft. Online security experts say a Kremlin-linked network called Pravda published nearly 4 million pro-Russia articles targeting 49 countries last year. The campaign isn’t just about influencing an individual reader. It’s meant to poison the information that trains chatbots — what’s being called large language model (LLM) grooming. AI bots all want large info databases to comb through, which is why they’ve gotten in trouble for scanning pirated books and the like, but they vary in how much weight they give to different sources, says Joseph Menn, a Washington Post tech reporter specializing in hacking, privacy, and surveillance. He adds that you’re likely to get an incorrect answer when searching for new info. Russia particularly has been fine-tuning disinformation techniques as AI chatbots evolve, and one subject that’s a big for them is Ukraine. “They're trying to dissuade Western European countries from helping Ukraine. And so sometimes they make up stories about fictional Western European figures who go to Ukraine to help, and then they get killed, which is very sad, or would be, if they actually existed. But some of these stories might originate in a conventional state-controlled propaganda organ … but many search engines know to down-rank those in value,” Menn explains. “So then they get laundered. Sometimes it's through officially sponsored or unofficially sponsored telegram channels that are open to the public.” What’s new, he highlights, is Russia getting involved with sources that appear like ordinary news websites with lots of content. However, the sites have terrible interfaces and no organization. “Garbage information sites … are recycling propaganda and laundering it. It's called information laundering, where they take a narrative that is state-approved, and then make it seem like it's a fair news summary of what's been happening.” As electronic sources feed each other bad information, Russian trolls then edit that into Wikipedia pages, he says. “For example, in Ukraine disinformation, there are tons and tons of Wikipedia pages about military specifics, like this kind of tank has this kind of top speed and blah, blah, blah. And so those pages aren't widely read. So it's easier to be an editor on one of those because Wikipedia is run by volunteer editors. … So these Russian trolls will put in a number of edits, many of which are correct, and then they'll put in some more that are incorrect, and then link back to these content farm sites. So then the AI chatbots … when they search the web, really, really like Wikipedia because it's usually right. And once they get into Wikipedia, there's a better chance of getting into a chatbot’s output.” Menn says many people tracked this in the past, but information studies are now under attack — the U.S. government is clear about not wanting federal workers doing this, and some academics and think tank researchers are facing lawsuits over allegedly participating in a government censorship project. Plus, over the past week or two, the National Science Foundation has cut grants to misinformation studies, largely in the name of free speech. He continues, “Social media companies also used to look for this stuff and do a bigger job of stamping it out. But then they were sued. … So they've backed off as well. … Way fewer outside researchers [are] doing it. The U.S. government is not doing it itself. So where I'm seeing most of the information is from Europe.” What should consumers look out for? Fortunately, now chatbots are increasingly identifying their sources, Menn says. However, they don’t say whether those sources are high-quality or not, so folks need to read around, and keep in mind that well-known, great news sources don’t suddenly spring into being. Plus, some sites are deliberately misleading, as Russia has tried to make sites look like Fox News affiliates or The Washington Post. And so, stick to brands you’ve heard of, and don’t take a chatbot answer as more sophisticated than a traditional search engine, Menn advises. “Be aware that the bad guys are getting more bang for the buck in spreading lies with AI. And the AI defenses against it are not particularly built up yet, in part because all these different AI companies are rushing to get out new versions based on more sources of information.”