Alanna Kaufman and Alex Small, also known as Two Fat Als, know how to get more bang for their culinary buck. These former Daily Pennsylvanian editors, now law and medical students, tell us about their glories and disasters in the kitchen, as well as their ascent in the food world.
Street: Who is the genius behind your blog title "Two Fat Als"? Two Fat Als: We would say that was a fully collaborative effort. It’s a reference to Two Fat Ladies, the old-time cooking show.
Street: What inspired you to write The Frugal Foodie? TFA: The week before we were going to graduate, we got a phone call from a literary agent in New York who basically was like, “We love your site. Can we represent you and try to get you a book deal?” We were like, “Uh, yeah, good luck with that.” But two months later, she called us back. She had sold the concept to a publisher and we just sort of went from there. So we never even thought we would have a book; we were always just into the blog. I take the pictures for the blog and Alanna writes, so kind of like cooking, the blog was our creative outlet.
Street: What’s your favorite recipe that’s featured in the new book? TFA: The black bean dip. It’s this really simple, really delicious soup that is the epitome of the Frugal Foodie.
Street: If there’s one tool that every home cook should have on hand, what would it be? TFA: A good knife is far and away the most important tool, and it’s frequently the most neglected tool. It doesn’t need to be anything overly fancy; it just needs to be sharp and not from Ikea.
Street: Do you both collaborate on everything or do you have differentiated roles? Alex: Alanna is the creative genius behind the food. We have a ton of cookbooks, and she loves reading, so she’ll pick out what we’re going to make, but then, she can’t… actually… cook. Nah, I’m just kidding, she’s a great cook, but I’m the execution cook of the operation. So she’s like the brains, and I’m the brawn.
Street: What’s one essential ingredient that costs little but provides a lot of flavor? TFA: In terms of the book, our favorite ingredient is probably balsamic vinegar. We’ll do all sorts of things like marinades, dressings and sauces with it because it’s so cheap, and it tastes so good, and it’s very flexible. But our favorite secret ingredient is Sriracha. It’s like $4 and it’ll last you for like five years.
Street: If you could splurge on one ingredient, what would it be? TFA: We do this thing where we’ll have a ton of cheaper ingredients that we’ll use freely, and then we’ll have a set of expensive ingredients that we’ll use to accent dishes. So, for example, we’ll have an expensive balsamic vinegar that we’ll use to drizzle on things, and then we’ll have a cheap balsamic vinegar that we’ll cook with. We’ll shell out money for high quality spices and things like that — things where a little goes a long way. We use saffron in a bunch of our recipes, and a lot of people give us a hard time, like, “that’s not frugal, what’s that doing here?” But if you buy a tiny bit of saffron it’s not that expensive, and you can use it in tons of dishes.
Street: Have you had any notable cooking disasters? TFA: We have more cooking disasters than we care to admit. It’s not that we mess a lot of things up, but we’ll get these grand plans in our heads and try to execute them, and sometimes they just do not work. A lot of times they do work, but one time we tried to make this tofu chocolate mousse, and it was so foul. Really disgusting.
