Hidden Kitchens World—With Host Frances McDormand
The Kitchen Sisters Present
The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Host Frances McDormand leads us through this rich international story collection of land, community and food. From the organic olive groves and vineyards being grown on confiscated Mafia land in Sicily, to secret night clubs embedded in Soviet dissident kitchens. From tales of "cooking dogs" in Medieval England, to the little-known tale of agricultural explorers — the "Indiana Joneses of the plant world" — who introduced exotic dates from the Middle East to the Coachella Valley. We also go underground into the world of wine, war, and counterfeiting.
Plus, actor Gael Garcia Bernal takes us to his grandmother's Sinaloa kitchen in Mexico, Salman Rushdie takes us to Chocolate Town, Werner Herzog eats his shoe, and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti gives us his recipe for happiness.
Hidden Kitchens World was produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) in collaboration with Nathan Dalton and Brandi Howell, along with listeners around the world. Mixed by Jim McKee.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | RadioTopia. Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters present. |
| 0:04.0 | We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson, and Nikki Silva. |
| 0:11.0 | Hi, this is Nikki of the Kitchen Sisters. And Davy and I want to thank all of you who listen to the Kitchen Sisters present, and a special shout out to you who have supported Radiotopia. |
| 0:22.4 | Radiotopia supports us and makes our podcast and many other fantastic podcasts possible. |
| 0:28.8 | Just go check out the list at Radiotopia.fm. |
| 0:32.4 | We've been encouraged and humbled by all of the donations and emails that have come in, like this one from |
| 0:39.5 | Christine, who's on the board of the community radio station, KSQD Santa Cruz. She says, |
| 0:45.6 | Since the election, I have been very careful what I led into my head, podcast-wise, |
| 0:50.9 | and I have discovered that listening to the Kitchen Sisters is the perfect medicine |
| 0:55.5 | for troubling times. I learned so much about our country, its history, it's people, and I feel |
| 1:01.5 | so good when I'm done. So thank you, Christine, and thank you all. Your support fuels us and all of |
| 1:08.9 | our sister and brother shows here on the Radiotopia Network. |
| 1:12.3 | If you haven't had a chance yet, please pledge your support today at Radiotopia.fm. |
| 1:19.4 | Thanks for listening. |
| 1:23.7 | The communal kitchen was a worsen. |
| 1:27.1 | During the Stalin time, it was the most dangerous place to be in the kitchen. |
| 1:32.3 | Mafia kitchens from Sicily, dissident kitchens from Russia, turn-spit dogs from medieval England. |
| 1:39.3 | Turn-spit dogs, they were viewed as kitchen utensils as a piece of machinery. They were referred to as the |
| 1:46.7 | kitchen dog, the cooking dog or the verna peter cur. Atomic wine from France. I take the bottle in hand, |
| 1:55.8 | I put the bottle close to the detector and we start to record the gamma rays we are looking for, |
| 2:03.6 | radioactivity, in the wine. |
| 2:05.5 | From the Kitchen Sisters and PRX, Hidden Kitchen's World, a new hour of kitchen stories that travel the globe. |
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