All right boys and girls we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

I'm Ben Dominic happy to join you once more for what has become an annual tradition

this time of year our conversation with Christopher Kimball. He is formerly the founder of America's

Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated and is now at Milk Street. He has a new cookbook out that

is something I would recommend that you order now if you have been struggling to find something

for a home chef in your life on vegetables which we started out our conversation about.

Then we turn to a number of different elements of not just holiday cooking but other questions,

gifts and potential ideas for the cooks in your life and new things that you can try in the

new year when it comes to cooking. Christopher Kimball coming up next.

Since vegetables and plates had to be because they were inexpensive and available had to be

at the center of the plate they had to come up with ways of making them interesting so they char

the food directly over fire for example or in a skillet they use chilies or fermented sauces

or spices or herbs so they found ways to infuse or add big flavors to things that from a Western

perspective you'd say doesn't pack a big punch. A steak everyone thinks of is a big umami delivery

system but if you do vegetables the right way they also have big flavor. So I think pretty much

everyone's familiar with a combination of olive oil and salt and garlic and pepper and an oven

that work great on a lot of different vegetables. How do you kind of stretch yourself or what's the

first thing you should maybe think about for a side dish either this holiday season or just as a

goal for the new year to try to get out beyond that normal combination of things where just let's

just toss them in those things and throw them in an oven and that'll make it better. Well it does

make it better and I still do that but you can for example for some reasons strange reason cauliflower is

now you cannot publish a recipe today cauliflower and not have an A plus success with it. You know

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