Takeaway Q&A: Food Chats with Katie Okamoto
Bring on the butters!
Katie Okamoto (she/they) is a writer, personal and cultural essayist, and journalist, and an editor at the New York Times Wirecutter. She attended the Tin House Summer Workshop for nonfiction and memoir in 2020 and was a Periplus Fellowship finalist in 2021. Katie's writing and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Bon Appétit, Eater, Metropolis Magazine, The New York Times, Polygon, Taste, Vice, and more. Katie is the author of Snack Chat, a Substack newsletter about appetites, and a column at Catapult, “Objects of Affection,” which explored our feelings and relationships with the body through the lens of everyday things.
I loved your essay that was in Catapult about butter! I reread it earlier this week and I think the part that really stuck with me was the line, “butter puts me in my body.” I've been thinking about that a lot. Would love to hear more about that and if any other part of cooking gets you close to that kind of feeling?
Thank you! I wrote that essay a little bit ago at this point, and sometimes you'll write a personal essay and it feels like you just kind of have to get it out of your system. It's not like you don't feel the same way after, but you've either shifted or moved on or something. But I do feel like it’s the essay that I wrote for Catapult that has stayed with me the most.
I still bake a lot and don't have a microwave. The thing I like to bake most often is cookies, and those require softening butter. And so there's something about having the patience to warm up the butter — which for me is often holding it, or if it ends up being a colder month, holding it in my clothes somehow. Like I will put it in a sweatpant pocket. I've also been known to put it down my shirt before.
There are ziplock bags for this reason! To put butter in the clothes.
I know! I feel like there's nothing quite as friendly as a stick of butter, especially when it's in the kitchen, ingredient-wise. I feel like an egg comes close, but you can't really walk around your house with an egg. I mean, maybe you could. But a raw egg? I don't know, butter just feels very personal to me. Plus it’s that smell when you actually get into the creaming part of it. When you fold in the sugar, which I often do by hand, because I'm lazy and don't want to haul out my stand mixer all the time. Of course that’s counterintuitively harder. But I hate doing dishes. So, anything to avoid doing dishes.
But that smell of sugar and butter — I just hover my face over the bowl sometimes. It feels like molecularly they're coming into the air, on some level. I feel like we learned that at some point in school that when you smell things, they're literally in your nose.
Yeah! I am not much of a baker, but as soon as you started talking about mixing butter and sugar, the whole smell sort of washed over my body. It’s so specific and singular.
It really is a smell that permeates or saturates almost. I feel like sometimes you'll smell someone's cologne or something, and that's in your head, but certain smells are in your body.
Right! I guess when I think of baked goods, I often think about how they smell when they are finished. I can imagine it's nice to have something that while you're making it, has such a permeating smell.
It also makes me think of the heat of toasted sesame seeds. A lot of time in Japanese cooking, you grind them in a suribachi. It's like a bowl that has grooves in it, and you use this wooden pestle and grind it in there. It releases this smell that just completely makes you realize how porous you are. I don't know, there's something about it that’s almost mineral or something. But also savory and sweet. I just love that smell. It's so delicious. And it’s one of those smells that is so delicious when you're grinding it, but it's not the same after. The most sensory part is when you’re not eating it. I don't know what that is.
Well this definitely makes me want to be a baker. Speaking of which, do you have a favorite butter in particular for baking?
I used to be that kind of person. My budget changed a lot when I got a divorce. So especially for baking, I usually just buy the cheapest kind of unsalted butter. But when putting butter on toast, I like Kerrygold, which happens to be the best butter for eating and baking, according to Wirecutter’s taste tests.
It’s delicious as I'm sure you probably know. It's also a cooperative! And it comes in a gold block. It really reminds me of when you used to go to a restaurant in the 90s and they would give you a foil pack of butter. I remember squeezing it like an eraser. That feeling was so great.
There’s one Italian restaurant down the street from me that still has those! I look forward to the butter every time. And they put them in a basket with warm rolls that they bring to you after you order. It’s true you don’t see those precious golden butters around as much as you used to.
I feel like it's one of those things where the packaging is as delightful as what's in it.
The same thing extends to candy for sure! I was talking last month to the author Sarah Perry and one of her favorite candies is Rolo’s. Rolo’s have that surprise inner gold wrapper, and for her, that's part of the reason it feels so special and enjoyable. Maybe it’s the Willy Wonka influence on generations of kids.
That makes sense, and also makes me think of Toblerone. I feel like they were really special whenever I had one. They are different from Rolo’s obviously, but they also have the gold wrapper which made it special.
I love when companies don't change their packaging. Pepperidge Farm thankfully has never, as far as I can remember, updated their weird little paper in packets. I'm just so happy about that. I really want it to be the same forever. I don't know why I'm such a traditionalist about it, but yeah.
It's like they're in their little beds. It reminds me of someone's grandma giving me cookies or something.
It gives off the vibe of those Danish butter cookies in the tins with the little paper cups and it’s all kind of preciously arranged.
They're so nestled. I love that.
The right words exactly.
MUG BREAK! 🍵
Do you have a favorite mug and why?
All my mugs are my favorites. Some were gifts and I really cherish those. If you also count other hot beverage vessels, like the tea cups and saucers I inherited from my grandmother, who used to keep them on display in her dining room, I have a pretty sizable collection for a person who lives alone.
If I have to choose one, it's this half-dome–shaped, footed tea bowl that I bought myself when I first moved to Los Angeles from a super talented ceramicist who had also just recently moved to LA from Brooklyn. It's my only tea bowl and I love it so much. I think it qualifies as a mug since it's earthen and substantial and fits so beautifully between two hands. The interior is glazed smooth and the exterior has been left unglazed. The thickness of the mug is perfect, substantial but thin enough for a comfortable sip. I use this exclusively for matcha or houjicha, and there's something so comforting about its scale and domed shape.
I also have a really soft spot for kitschy mugs, but I have too many and they end up being relegated for holding measuring spoons and pens and stuff. This one, of a rock climbing wall in Acadia National Park called Great Head, of all things, makes me laugh. (You can see my tea bowl in the background of this picture, too.)
You have another essay where you mention the frivolity of certain foods being comforting during stressful situations, for example when you’re on an airplane. Have you had anything recently that has felt like a nice playful surprise?
I think honestly this month, with all the fires in LA, I've craved more nourishing and grounding. I do feel like summer time tends to be a little more frivolous and fun. That’s the time of year when I really want chips or gummy candy. But right now I've just been baking little cakes and having lentil soup, a lot of fried eggs — that kind of stuff.
The only thing I can think of for myself, in the playful food category, was on a recent trip to Portland. I went into a restaurant and they had a huge bowl of Dum-Dums so I grabbed a few. I kept them in my pocket until a walk later that night. It was the perfect thing at that moment, just going for a walk in the dark and having lollipops. I picked a cherry one for myself, and I got a mystery flavor for my wife. We all need more mystery flavor in our lives.
I love Dum-Dums and all lollipops. I actually ordered a big bag of them during pandemic lockdown. I just remember working my way through that bag. And also giving them to friends even though we had masks on.
It's such a good gift to just have on hand! Do you have a favorite flavor?
I do really like the butterscotch Dum-Dum. And also the root beer one! I feel like I like the grandpa/grandma flavors. I think green apple was a favorite when I was in school, but kind of not as much anymore. How about you?
I'm a big cherry person - any time that flavor is available in any candy! For sure root beer is in my top three, though.
Yeah, there was candy that I still dream about that I had when I was a child when I went to visit my family in Japan. It was a Coca-Cola flavored hard candy that in my mind was the size of a Tootsie Roll Pop head, but I’m sure in real life it’s smaller. That one was so good. They have a lot of soda flavored hard candy in Japan.
Do you remember what it was called?
I don't remember what it was called! I’ve tried to find it but failed. That did lead me down a rabbit hole, also during the pandemic, of trying to find hard candy from other countries.
I found what I believe is an Italian lozenge for settling your stomach. It’s fizzy on the inside, so it dissolves like a hard candy and then there's a powder inside that fizzes.
When you go to a dinner party what do you like to bring?
My goto has always been an Alice Medrich recipe for sesame cake. It is so delicious. You can bake it into a loaf pan or a round cake, and it smells like heaven. It has toasted sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds, a little vanilla, and it's just incredibly portable. I don't ice it, although you could, and I have in the past.
It’s just a snacking cake, but it's so good. And I feel like it's a crowd-pleaser because for some reason people just like sesame and dessert. It’s not cloying, it always goes with whatever else people might bring. So, that's one I love.
I feel like maybe I'm a little bit of a selfish baker in the sense that I tend to just want to make what I am in the mood for and then share it with people. So, it tends to be snacking style cakes that aren't too sweet. Or cookies of some kind. They’re just so shareable, and I feel like everyone has room for a cookie at the end.
I’m always the most excited when someone brings baked goods to the party. I feel like it’s a rarity.
I have a peanut allergy — and it’s very important for me to be able to share food with community. I want to participate and not feel excluded. Bringing something that people are going to want is part of it. I think that's how I got into baking to be honest!
That makes a lot of sense!
I feel like if you bring your appetite, that's the best way to share, versus trying to anticipate what other people want and trying to tailor to that. It's a life lesson in general for me. But I think it applies to dinner parties.
That's such a good reminder! You've really inspired me to bake. I already know how much butter I have, but I have no idea about the flour. It’s been awhile!
Thanks so much Katie for chatting today!
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