Padma Lakshmi shares stories about her childhood in India, her time in Spain and her new show, “Taste the Nation.” Plus, we get a crash course on Parisian cocktail culture from David Lebovitz; we present a new take on the cheeseburger; and Bianca Bosker teaches us about the history and evolution of wine reviews.

Questions in this Episode

“I was making beans for years and doing the overnight soak and dumping the water, and the reason I thought I was doing all of this was to mitigate flatulence. Then, somebody gave me a vegetarian cookbook and in their recipe for pot beans, they said to just throw the dried beans into a pot with epazote and other things, and when I made the beans that way, I found out there was no flatulence. Have you ever used this technique?”

“I was taught that cold oil goes into a hot pan when cooking. This helps create a natural non-stick reaction. Some Milk Street recipes/techniques call for oil going into a cold pan. When and why is the need for the pan to be hot or cold when adding oil during cooking?”

“My cheese sauce for mac and cheese always seems to break or become grainy in texture. How can I fix that?”

“Lots of recipes for roasting skin-on poultry tell you to use a baking sheet as opposed to, say, a roasting pan. My mom always worries that I'm going to splatter fat all over her oven, but I foolishly go ahead with what the recipe says. My question is, why do recipes call for a sheet if fat splatter is inevitable? Or is it preventable, even with a sheet, and am I doing something wrong?”

“My mom and I recently got a bread maker, and we’ve been using the recipes that came with the machine. So far, the bread we made has been good, but I’ve noticed that the bread dries out very fast despite our efforts to cover it in foil, plastic, and store it in Tupperware. I’ve been reading that adding potato flour to a bread recipe will keep it softer longer, but how much do I add per cup of flour?”