Quotes from Sohla El-Waylly

I like it when you walk in a restaurant and all the walk-ins are down and everything is rotten. That gives me jolts of excitement.

A good kitchen scale is an absolute must-have for every kitchen. Although nothing can substitute for skilled intuition - add a dash of this and a handful of that, cook until golden brown and delicious - there are times when the precision a scale can provide is vital.

My brand is to make things harder for myself. I carry too many things at once, I volunteer to make a 12-layer cake no one asked for, and I do all my mixing with a tiny spatula.

Parathas are a flaky, buttery, and layered style of flatbread that can be served alongside curries, rolled up and dipped into hot chai, or made into a meal by themselves with a side of raita for dunking.

If youre serious about cooking, baking, or life in general, then you need a scale.

Ive been a pastry chef for a long time, so I dont always have the best gauge on how people bake at home.

Regardless of whether you prefer your waffle light golden or dark brown, it should be crisp on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside.

Sunday brunch, or any-morning brunch, is better with warm, golden waffles. Crisp and light and scented with vanilla, waffles are the shape of a perfect breakfast, cupping pools of melted butter and maple for a lavish start to the day.

Koshari is a cozy pile of warm carbs - traditionally, cooked rice, lentils, macaroni, and chickpeas, all mixed together - smothered in perky tomato sauce and buried in fried shallots.

The intense aroma and warmth fresh ginger adds to dishes is irreplaceable. The heat found in ginger is attributed to a chemical it contains called gingerol, which is closely related to the capsaicin found in hot peppers and the piperine in black pepper, but is much milder than the two.

Working in a restaurant is tough. You're standing in front of hot things, holding sharp things, for hours on end with little pay. But, oh, the seltzer. The one respite from never-ending back pain is a bubbly, bottomless supply of it.

Ive found my way into a life surrounded by food people, which often leads to intensely passionate conversations about nonsense: deep-dives on devils food cake, monologues on jammy eggs, and proclamations of love addressed to Popeyes fried chicken sandwich.

If you want to step up you mashed-potato game, regardless of whether you like them fluffy or creamy, a food mill or potato ricer is your best bet.

My all-time favorite way to use for instant dashi is to simply boil potatoes in it, simmering the water all the way down until Im left with a finger-licking salty dashi crust all around them.

Whenever my husband and I order delivery from our favorite Lebanese place, the center of the meal isnt the chicken shawarma or the mixed grill for two - its the potent garlic sauce, toum.

Zucchini fritters arent a dish Im ever inclined to make. They take the watery, bland summer staple to an all-time low, shredding the squash to oblivion and weighing it down with a stodgy mix of flour and eggs.

When you usually think of dessert for one, its something microwaved in a mug or a precious, portioned miniature.

Because biryani is all about the rice, this is the time to splurge on some extra-long, premium aged basmati.

A great immersion blender - also known as a hand blender or stick blender - can complement a well-equipped kitchen, offering a convenient alternative to dragging out larger appliances for many basic kitchen tasks.

A dough might start out lumpy and wet, but as you knead, it will grow smooth, supple, and springy - thats how you know youve fully developed your gluten network and can stop kneading.

A mountain of nachos might look fun - but at what cost?! Only the outermost layer gets topping love, while everything underneath is either naked and dry or sopping wet under the weight of it all.

A great scale should be accurate first and foremost, but also easy to clean, intuitively designed, simple to read, and convenient to store. These are the qualities that will have you reaching for a scale every time you portion meat for burgers or whip up a batch of fresh pasta.

Sunday morning, while the neighbors were whipping up pancake batter, I watched my mom effortlessly roll out smooth dough, smear it with her heady all-day ghee, and transform it into a flaky flatbread with countless crisp and chewy layers.

The time I learned the most in restaurants was when I was alone in a basement, figuring it out on my own.