I'm Frances Lamb and this is the splendid table from APM. Soa El Whaley has been many things in her career.

She was the pastry chef of one of my favorite restaurants in my neighborhood, which I know doesn't matter a whole lot to a whole lot of people but it's where I learned

She was brilliant and maybe a little bit devious

But after leaving the restaurant world she became a writer recipe developer and eventually a bona fide cooking video

Superstar at Serious Eats, Bonapetee in the Babish culinary universe and now at the

New York Times. She makes ingenious recipes,

indulges in her deep sense of nerdiness

by cooking ancient historical dishes.

She teaches her audience

how to take pro techniques and make them feel completely

comfortable at home. And I knew people love to work or I knew it was really serious when I saw one of her fans once post, quote, I would lay down my life for Sola.

And now Sola is a best-selling co-book author with a book called Start Here

that I can assure you was engineered for maximum impact. five pounds 600 plus pages and

step-by-step photos for every recipe. It's like a culinary school on your shelf and

we are spending the whole hour with her this week, talking about that book, taking your questions, and more.

Hey Sola, it's great to see you.

Hey, good to see you too.

You know, so many people know you from your cooking videos and I so love how you've done so many different types of videos and they've really kind of showcase

your personality your life you know from your love teaching people to cook you know I love the ones but you work with

your husband ham and you know certainly showing off your deep nerdiness for history and

just like nerdiness more generally but you know it occurred to me that I have

followed your work for so long and we've known each other for a little while, but I don't actually know how you got into food and cooking. So how did that happen?

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