Order Up! A Conversation with Emma Frisch, a One Potato Parent, Mom, and Cookbook Author

Part of our monthly interview segment, Emma answers our five rapid-fire questions AND is offering One Potato subscribers a special gift recipe!

Introduce Yourself: Emma & kids: Cora, age 5, & A., age 8

We love learning about our community members’ kitchen hacks and favorite kitchen tools. What’s yours, and why?

My absolute favorite kitchen hack for hiding veggies and other immune-boosting ingredients in dishes is to blend things up!

This includes blending the mirepoix (onions, carrots, celery and often garlic) in chicken soup, before adding the chicken and noodles. Or blending garlic, ginger, carrots, and coconut milk for a mild curry base. For soups and stews, I typically use an immersion blender. If your child is helping you, make sure it’s unplugged immediately after using, so there’s no risk of anyone sticking their fingers in the blade (like I did once, as a grown-up! Eek!).

I also use a Vitamix for salad dressings and sauces, which are a great vehicle for getting garlic into everyone’s diet. And of course, smoothies and even hot beverages, where I can add powdered herbs. One of my kids’ favorite blended potions is hot cocoa made with cacao powder, mushroom powder, dates, vanilla, and milk of choice (this recipe is in my book Seasonal Family Almanac).

At One Potato, we also love an immersion blender - especially when we are building up our sauce library! Great recommendation and safety tip, we could not agree more.

What’s your kid’s favorite cooking task, or how do they help out in the kitchen?

If we’re being completely honest, adding and stirring ingredients for baked goods. Why? Because they can steal nibbles of sugar or stick their fingers under the honey or maple syrup as it’s poured in. 

Isn’t this nearly every child’s favorite task in the kitchen?!

One of my fondest childhood memories baking with my mother was finding the little clumps of brown sugar to eat. 

Yes, of course, as a mother myself now, I get worried about cavities and meltdowns. And if they’re going overboard I explain (calmly, through gritted teeth), “the sweetener is for the recipe, and you can enjoy it when it’s finished!” 

But I try to remember that baking together is an opportunity to learn and bond with each other, and it doesn’t happen every day.

You know what, you’re right, we’ve heard this answer before!

When did you become passionate about cooking? Is there a story behind it?

As a first-generation American in a multicultural family, my three siblings and I were raised in the Italian tradition of eating homemade, seasonal meals.

As a child, I was glued to my mother, which meant I shadowed her in the garden and kitchen. Though growing up I loved to cook, visit farmers markets, and especially to eat, I became passionate about food in college when I was assigned to read Fast Food Nation. This book made me realize how valuable my mother’s approach to food was, and launched my career working to build farm-to-city relationships through schools, hospitals, and community centers.

My love for travel led me to working with a farm-to-city movement in Ecuador for several years, and ultimately Nicaragua, where my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I opened a boutique hostel, La Buena Onda. I started the cafe.

At first, I had no clue what I was doing. But I loved every minute of it! I redecorated the garage, developed a menu, wrote our staff cookbook, and devoted myself to tracking down local ingredients - my expertise. This was when my passion for cooking kicked in.

I loved working with ingredients that were grown by kind, hardworking families who I had built a relationship with. Ingredients connected to a story, like the potatoes I walked four hours to find, only to be escorted home at night, two meals later, on a pregnant horse. And you know what? Our hand cut french fries were so much better than the pre-cut, frozen french fries imported from the U.S.!

I felt connected to food in a new way, and it was empowering to recognize that not only could I cook… but that I could create simple dishes for other people that they liked! Sometimes loved!

Still today, my recipes always begin with fresh, seasonal ingredients and a good story.

Wow, this part of your answer really resonated with our team at One Potato: “I felt connected to food in a new way.” We hope to help our One Potato community reading this Substack find that connection to food, and family, by reading these stories and writing and sharing their own.

A Cooking Skill you use all the time, that you think other home cooks should practice/have under their belt:

As a working mother of two, the #1 cooking skill I recommend for other home cooks is meal planning.

Meal planning can take many forms. It can mean washing, chopping, and storing vegetables as soon as you return home from the grocery store, or on a designated day of the week. Or while you’re waiting for dinner to bake in the oven, you can prepare the next day’s vegetables or marinate meat. It can mean planning your dinners for a week, or all your meals for the month! It can be assigning prep and cook nights to each member of the family.

All forms of meal planning help you work towards a goal without adding the question “what will I make for dinner tonight?” to your daily mental load. 

It can feel overwhelming to add meal planning to an already busy routine. But trust me, once you make time to do it, you will notice how much more time you gain throughout the week, and how much less time you spend thinking about what to cook!

If you’re curious about meal planning, you can download my free one-week meal plan, which includes 8 recipes, a shopping list (Instacart and printable) and prep lists. 

This month the meal plan features One Potato’s delicious Bucatini Pasta with Marinara and Herbed Ricotta!

If you take a look at your One Potato September Cook’s Calendar, you’ll be seeing this Bucatini Pasta recipe in your inbox on Thursday this week. You can meal prep your marinara sauce in advance today to make preparing week night dinner even quicker.

We love that Emma and her family are part of OUR family at One Potato. To learn more about Emma, you can visit emmafrisch.com and follow @emmafrisch on Instagram. Emma is the author of Feast by Firelight: Simple Recipes for Camping, Cabins, and the Great Outdoors, and Seasonal Family Almanac: Recipes, Rituals, and Crafts to Embrace the Magic of the Year. She is the co-founder of the glamping destination, Firelight Camps, and appeared as a top finalist on Food Network Star.

Emma is offering a one-time 20% discount for the One Potato community to subscribe to her Substack, Time for Dins!

Here’s a delightful recipe from Emma for the end of summer - her Blueberry-Cardamom Frozen Yogurt Pops:

Tools: Small saucepan, blender, popsicle molds

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 c. blueberries

• 1 tsp lemon juice

• 1/4 c. water

• 3 Tbsp honey

• 2/3 c. Greek yogurt

• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom (or more to taste)

• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Prepare the blueberries:

1. Combine and Heat: Add the blueberries to a small pot with a splash of water, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for 5 minutes, until the berries begin to break down and smell fragrant.

Purée & Mix:

2. Transfer the blueberries to a blender and add the remaining ingredients. Whiz until smooth and creamy.

Freeze:

3. Pour into the popsicle molds and freeze for at least 4 hours, until set.

   Pro Tip from Emma: If you want to free up your mold, you can run water over the molds and remove the popsicles once completely set, transferring them to a Ziploc bag in the freezer and reusing your molds for another batch of yummy popsicles!

Devour & Enjoy!!