Other Peoples' Kitchens. Q&A with Brianna Plaza
Brianna is based in Brooklyn New York, and describes her kitchen as 'the biggest kitchen I’ve had in my adult life.'
Hello Brianna. Can you please tell us a little about yourself and your substack publication?
My name is
and I’m the writer of ‘on hand’, a newsletter that takes readers on explorations of the vast world of food and drink through stories, original recipes, and interviews featuring chefs, cookbook writers, iconic food makers, and boundary-pushing brands.I am based in Brooklyn, New York, where I’ve lived for the last eleven years, but I originally hail from the West Coast, with a stop in New Jersey for school. I am a freelance marketer by day, but I’ve dabbled off and on in the hospitality and food worlds since I was in graduate school. I worked at Trader Joe’s for a few years and when I first moved to New York, I helped teach cooking classes at Sur la Table.
When I quit my full time job and went freelance, I was able to work more in hospitality, and I was a prep baker at a restaurant in Brooklyn and worked at a few wine shops. I’ve loved being able to try my hand at so many different facets of hospitality, and sometimes I daydream about cooking full time.
I have dabbled in food writing for a long time but was never able to do anything consistently until starting my newsletter, and even then, it took me a while to get into a rhythm. I had a few iterations of a blog that had some recipes and stories, but in 2021, I launched on hand. It’s been really great to be able to talk to so many interesting folks around the world about their work in food.
Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen? How much of a role does it play in your family and when writing and testing recipes for your ‘On Hand’ newsletter?
My kitchen is the biggest kitchen I’ve had in my adult life and decently big for a New York City apartment kitchen. I would say it’s galley kitchen-ish. On one side, the fridge is built into a small cabinet setup, and on the other are a wall of cabinets, a counter, stove, and the sink.
The fridge and cabinets don’t take up the whole wall on their side, so I bought a large island to add much needed workspace, additional storage, and a bit of seating.
An interesting thing about my house is that I have a lot of storage, but because it’s a 100 old building, it’s a bit all over the place, so my kitchen isn’t quite as well organized as I’d like. I don’t have a large pantry, so when I moved in, food was stored in multiple cabinets. Over the last few years, I’ve done some minor reorganizing that helps contribute to better overall organization, but someday, I’d love to do a strong refresh and build in some better storage.
My kitchen plays a big role in my life not only because it’s where I spend a lot of time, but it’s also the first room in my house. When I come home, I always put my bag(s) down in my kitchen before doing anything else, even if that bag ends up in a different room. I also love to host, and the kitchen is where everyone ends up gravitating. I added the seating at the bar so even if a guest isn’t helping cook, there’s still space for them to hang with me and chit-chat.
But generally, I love cooking and eating, so I am in and out of the kitchen all day. On days when I work from home, I will bop in the kitchen between meetings, hoping a good snack will appear. On days when I am testing recipes, I will try and block off some time to run through some ideas and cook through the final product. My kitchen gets its best light during the day, so if I am trying to shoot some content, I aim to recipe test midday.
What are your favourite and most used kitchen gadgets?
I am not much of a gadget person except for a few essentials: a stand mixer, toaster oven, mini prep, scale, and immersion blender. I use the toaster oven most often, and the others are there for use as needed (which honestly isn’t that often).
The “gadget” I rely on the most, though, is my Sonos speaker. I simply cannot work in a quiet kitchen. Whether I am recipe testing, making lunch, or grabbing coffee, there is almost always some sort of background noise. I listen to NPR as background noise during the day, a good playlist when I am recipe testing, and catch up on my podcasts when I am casually cooking. My speaker was out for repair last week, and it was terrible.
You have a deep interest in food and cooking. How did this come about? What were the influences behind it?
I come from a very food-focused family and my interest in food and cooking definitely comes from them. I was born in California, and my parents had a massive garden. I don’t necessarily have memories of helping cook when I was really young, but I do have memories of being in the garden and picking vegetables. When we moved to Arizona, they still had a garden and eventually put a wood burning oven in the yard. Cooking, food, and the act of being together around food is deeply central to our family.
I am not sure if it’s nature or nurture or both, but I’ve never really been a picky eater and was exposed to a wide variety of foods really young. My parents cooked a wide variety of cuisines, and we never really went out much. It was normal for our family to eat a semi-elaborate meal most nights. Not every meal was an event, but even simple meals were made from scratch. We didn’t eat frozen, canned, or pre-made meals, and we never ordered takeout (I had to teach my parents how to use Seamless in 2020).
I think this foundation set me up to be an adult who (mostly) doesn’t find the act of cooking for myself a chore. I find value in exploring the food of cultures that are different from mine. I think food can be a tool of diplomacy, and I think the best way to get to know someone is to cook and eat with them. I have a deep interest in food because I love eating good food, but it’s also an incredible way to explore the world.
You have interviewed a number of people for your ‘On Hand’ newsletter, is there anyone you would like to interview?
I’d love to chat with
and Yotam Ottolenghi. Both have written cookbooks that I reference regularly, and I’d love to learn more about how they think and develop recipes. I’ve actually reached out to their teams and they both politely declined. Most of the time, I just get ghosted, so here’s hoping a polite no can someday turn into a yes!How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live in Brooklyn? Are there fresh food markets or farmers’ markets available?
There is A LOT of food to explore in Brooklyn. One of the main reasons I love living in New York is the unlimited possibility of dining options, and I have really enjoyed trying different restaurants and cuisines across the city over the last eleven plus years.
You can find almost any cuisine in the city, and I love letting my stomach guide me across town. An ideal Saturday is picking a neighborhood, taking a long walk or bike ride to get there, and exploring the dining options. I keep extensive lists of places I’d like to visit, but I am always looking out for spots I find on the fly.
I don’t know that Brooklyn has regional cuisine because there’s so much to offer. But I’d say a quintessential New York breakfast is a bacon-egg-and-cheese-on-a-roll from your nearest bodega or a fresh bagel from any one of our many, many bagel shops. I almost feel like the natural wine bar with small bites that lean Italian and French could be labeled a regional cuisine because we have so many of them. But also, I love them. Keep opening more, I will come.
As a cook, New York is unmatched in access to ingredients. There are specialty stores of all types, and that makes it very easy to shop locally and find new, interesting, and obscure ingredients. Most neighborhoods have restaurants and shops catering to specific cuisines, and many of them have been around for decades (or longer). I can grab pierogi in Greenpoint, fresh-cut pasta at Raffetto’s in the West Village, or sumac at Sahadi's on Atlantic Avenue. I live in Park Slope, which has a number of specialty shops that I frequent, and I am very lucky that I can get so many outstanding ingredients so close to home.
Plus, we also have world-class farmers’ markets, many of which run year round. I’m very lucky that I live across the street from the park, and there are markets three days a week nearby, so most weeks, I tend to stick around my apartment. When I lived in Manhattan, my go-to was the Union Square Farmers’ Market, and it’s still the best in the city. It runs four days a week, and if you go early when they open, you’ll see chefs from local restaurants wheeling around crates of produce to take back to their restaurants. I still try to go to Union Square because they have the best selection, hands-down.
Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?
I hope to eventually update my kitchen, but I am not totally sure what that looks like. I know I’d want some things updated: a new counter, a larger sink, and some recessed lights. But my pantry situation is lacking and there has to be a better way to organize my cookware and prepware. But I am currently in the middle of a laundry room project in my apartment, so the kitchen will have to wait!
What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?
I try not to buy too many things I don’t need, hence why I don’t have a lot of kitchen gadgets or extra tools. I also try not to make too many recipes that require buying a ton of new ingredients and instead I prefer to work with what I have. There are exceptions to both rules, sure, but not having too much stuff helps keep my kitchen less cluttered. I have gotten very good at restraining myself when I go to New York’s specialty stores because I simply don’t have the room to store things.
I also try to be a clean as I go person, though admittedly, I sometimes give up at some point during the cooking process and the dishes pile up in the sink. But when I clean as I go, it does make cleaning at the end feel way less annoying.
I don’t think my kitchen needs to be bigger, especially for one or two people. But I do eventually want better storage and organization. I don’t think I’d ever become a person who has enough backstock for the apocalypse, but I’d like to be able to store a bit more and keep it in my kitchen instead of in the hall closet.
How many cookbooks do you have, and do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?
I love collecting cookbooks, but I feel like I probably have less than other food writers! I would not call myself a minimalist by any means, but living in some very small New York apartments has made me be more critical of what I bring into my house.
My favorite cookbooks are the ones that are not only useful, but also beautiful to look at and fun to read. When I get a new cookbook, I spend time reading through the whole thing before I even start cooking from it.
I live in a 100 year old building and I have these gorgeous built-ins in my living room where most of my cookbooks live. A handful of them are relegated to decoration, but I do have a shelf that hosts some of my more used cookbooks, so they’re easier to access. I keep my most used books on a shelf in my kitchen and periodically swap them out to try and force myself to use them more. Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple and Allison Roman’s Dining In and Nothing Fancy are probably the books I’ve used the most, and Andy Baraghani’s more recent The Cook You Want To Be has a lot of bangers.
I haven’t written any books, but maybe someday!
Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?
I have so many recipes that I love, but I rarely repeat anything. There’s not enough time to try all the recipes I’ve bookmarked! One recipe that does get made quite often is my dad’s vinaigrette. He made it up one day many years ago while trying to recreate a salad dressing from a favorite local restaurant. Now, the dressing has taken on a life of its own. Everyone in our family riffs on it to make it slightly their own, and family friends have started to make it their house dressing, too.
Get the recipe for Brianna’s Simple Salad and Vinaigrette dressing.
Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us,
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Read more from the series Q&A: Other People’s Kitchens.
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I love the kitchen, the lifestyle! Brava! It feels so country, yet it's Brooklyn! It has a very warm and inviting feel.
Yay! Thanks for chatting!