Three years ago, we sat down with the one and only Sara Moulton. Now, the iconic protégé of Julia Child is back with a new season of Sara’s Weeknight Meals, and so are we! We caught up with the queen of practical gourmet to get the scoop on her latest culinary adventures, the secret to her enduring charm, and why her new dishes are about to become your weeknight salvation. Trust us, you’ll want to read every delicious word.
Sara, what have you been up to since we last spoke? It was three years ago already, can you believe it? That was in 2022 and now it’s 2025!
SM: It’s amazing about time, particularly as we get older; maybe it’s always amazing about time. What have I been up to? Pretty much what I was up to before, which is I’m down to two things – I do my public television show, and our sponsor continues to be the cruise line Oceana. And they’ve been a wonderful partner, they’ve been very supportive. So, I continue to work with them and that means travel. This year we did something different – we set up a studio on the ship and shot on the ship.
Oh!?
SM: Yeah, which was great because we got a lot more done than we normally do; it was all in one place. You just walk up a couple flights of stairs, the whole crew, and there you are, you’re ready to go! We also did another international cruise, which we’ve been doing every year since they started with us. I still do my show, and that involves a fair amount of travel and that’s a lot of fun. And, I’m still co-host with Christopher Kimball for a small segment of Milk Street’s podcast.
Is that weekly?
SM: Yeah it airs on NPR, we take questions from callers. It’s an hour-long podcast and I may be part of 20 minutes of it. In the beginning I was on every time, now they’re doing more themed shows, so like they did Italy – they had Lidia Bastianich. I’m a generalist, and now they’re getting more specific, which makes sense.
This month we are premiering your new season on KLCS; is there anything we should be looking out for in Season 14?
SM: I think what we’ve been focusing on since this wonderful thing happened, where we ended up with the cruise line as our major sponsor; it’s become more international weeknight meals. It’s not as much me alone, it’s more people with from the places we go, cooking their version of a weeknight meal because everyone eats dinner. I think even more than Americans, Europeans care about eating dinner; they’re not doing takeout and prepared foods. We still are, I wish we weren’t. But it’s really fun for me because I get to learn from other people, and it’s a mix of chefs and home cooks making their recipes, but even home cooks you can learn a ton from, particularly if they love it and they’ve been doing it forever. They’ve figured out some of their own tips and tricks which I don’t know about. I love it because I learn new recipes, it’s really a shot in the arm. I’m sort of bored with myself (laughs) on TV. I mean, I have lots of advice for everybody after all these millions of years cooking, but it’s more fun to be with somebody new and learn their whole perspective. And there’s lots of common things and there’s lots of new things.
Are they chefs we know? And, in what locations were you filming?
SM: In our travels, we were in Barcelona, where we’ve been a lot recently. And that is more just a couple of field pieces, but some fun pieces, about where to get really good tapas. And my all-time favorite tapa, was this little hole in the wall place; they barely had their name on the door. It was just a breakfast and lunch place, not opened for dinner. They had wonderful grilled whole squid and grilled sardines, but my favorite thing was something that’s just not unique to them, it’s called “the bomba,” literally “the bomb.” What it is, and it sounds so weird, and it doesn’t sound necessarily like it’d be fantastic, but it was fantastic. (And they wouldn’t give us the receipt of course.) It’s mashed potatoes with some ground meat in it, I think it was pork, but like not a nugget in the middle. I think the mashed potatoes were made with tons of really good olive oil, which is something I’ve found in the Mediterranean as a theme. Every where we go, it’s the really excellent olive oil that pus the dish over the top, oddly enough. So that mashed potatoes was made into a little mound and coated in crumbs and fried, and then it was topped with aioli, but the real Spanish aioli, which was just purely minced garlic and olive oil, period. Nothing else. Emulsified. You will never kiss again, and that’s ok. So that was topped with the aioli and then a sprinkling of hot chili powder. I don’t know what it was; my whole team loved that. And we also went to a couple other places including one of the oldest stores in Barcelona. So we do some field pieces, but then we shot in Turkey in Istanbul, at this absolutely gorgeous 4-star hotel; it used to be the sultan’s palace. The chef and I cooked on a table outside. He made two fish dishes, one was sea bream and salt crust, which was wonderful. One of those hard salt crusts that you have to knock to take the fish out. And the fish does not taste salty; it just tastes delicious. The other was a layered steam fish. So that was fun! And we shot also in Turkey near Ephesus.
Back to the fish, I always feel that dish is a waste of salt.
SM: Well, salt is expensive. Your point is well taken. I would say in that department, it is a special occasion dish, also because it’s a fun reveal. One could say it’s like carving the turkey at the table. It’s smashing the salt crust at the table. But I hear you.
So you went to Ephesus…
SM: This woman has this wonderful restaurant. First we had a hearty Turkish breakfast, they really eat a big, big, big breakfast. And that was fun – eggs, and all different sorts of spreads. Turkey is very similar to Greek food, although they’d probably kill me, both of them, for saying that. But there’s lots of similarities. But then, we went and made lamb shanks. Ok, that’s not a weeknight meal, but they were wonderful braised lamb shanks. And this women who I cooked with has this beautiful inn restaurant; she’s like a very high-end chef. Beautiful inn on top of a mountain, with an enormous, old olive tree in the backyard. Really beautiful, fresh ingredients; absolutely farm-to-table. Of course, I loved it that it was a woman I was cooking with. And again, we cooked outside with this beautiful view behind us. So that was fantastic.
Does the cruise line pick all these locations for you? How did you find them?
SM: Well, that’s the interesting thing, because the ship picks wonderful destinations that other ships go to. And the ship also has excursions for the guests on-board. And the excursions are very good, including the culinary ones, which a lot of the other ships have. They might have an excursion where you actually go buy the ingredients in the local market then go back on ship and cook it. But that’s not what we do, we instead have to find our own talent, the people that we’re going to cook with. So we do that in all sorts of different ways. For Turkey, we worked with the Turkish tourist board to find this wonderful chef that I cooked with. So in Turkey, we worked with the tourist board, and in Greece, we were in Lesbos, I met somebody last Christmas and he’s Greek and he lives part time in New York City, but he does tours; I asked him did he know anybody in a couple places we were going to be in Greece. And he knew somebody in Lesbos, this wonderful woman who speaks beautiful English, who has a house right in Mytilene, the main town on Lesbos; her family has had it for a 100 years. They built it, it’s a beautiful old house. And the kitchen we cooked in, it’s the very first show, was just like a big hug, like a grandmother’s kitchen. And the sunlight coming through the windows. She and I made zucchini pie and white bean salad. And the zucchini pie is like spanakopita, only it made with zucchini and herbs, and of course feta cheese. It was so delicious and wonderful. It was just great being with her. Before we did that, we had hors d’oeuvres at the local café.
I love the local café is both a coffee shop that makes wonderful coffee, but later in the day they have hors d’oeuvres and then at night they have drinks. That was right in-town at a charming little place. So that was fun. We did two cruises. One was Miami to Miami. We never got off the ship, because all we did was shoot on the ship; that was in April. And in May was the Mediterranean cruise. The one we shot on the ship, we cooked with guests on the ship, or people who worked on the ship. Again, it was international, so one of the people I cooked with was one of the food and beverage managers. You can’t make a connection to the cruise line, because it’s pubic television. He made some of his family recipes, he’s from Lyon, and this is a dish from Lyon, so it was chicken and vinegar sauce.
So this was Miami?
SM: The cruise goes from Miami to Miami, it stops in places in the Caribbean and also in Charleston. We never got off the ship, because we were shooting in the culinary center; we set up a whole set. Even though we weren’t taking advantage of where we were traveling, we were still shooting with international folks. So one of the other people I cooked with was Italian, whose family owns a restaurant in southern Italy. She has a connection to the ship, which is how we ended with her. She also happens to be a body builder, which was sort of an odd extra. So when I asked her to show me to show me the frittata she just made, she turned sideways to show me this frittata, but also to show me her arm. She was ripped! That frittata was really fun, she actually puts bread in it, which gave it a nice texture. We cooked with a woman, her dish was Indian, but she’s from the tiny island of Mauritius, which is off the coast of Africa. It was a wonderful dish with an egg in it and all sorts of vegetables layered that you turn upside down.
Is this a large cruise line, like thousands of people?
SM: It’s one of the smaller cruise lines. So it’s very cozy, I like it, and the food is so good! So what’s fun about shooting on these ships, especially with the second one, was that we worked really hard most days. Although with the second cruise, we don’t necessarily shoot in every port, because we can only get off and shoot in the port if we have 10 hours, because other wise we may miss the ship. The ship does not wait for you, it doesn’t matter if you’re the Queen of England, it will not wait for you. Because we have to get off, travel somewhere, unload, set up the the lights, do the prep, shoot it, take down the lights, pack everything up and get back to the ship in time. So, we can only shoot in ports where we’re there for a long time. So we only shot four times when we were at sea and a couple of times in Barcelona. What’s really fun, like the Miami to Miami we never got off the ship.
The Miami cruise was in America?
SM: Yes. Now we have better support, more, money, a better partner. So we can bring our own crews. But our favorite camera guy, and sound guy, and second camera guy, and culinary producer, was able to be with us in Miami . So that was great. And on the second cruise, we couldn’t bring a culinary producer, but the other three were with us. So, what I didn’t know about these folks, who I’d worked with before, mainly at Natalie’s house, my producer partner is Natalie Gustafson. And we would always do some field pieces, even before we had a cruise line. But we would do the bulk of the shooting at her house in Greenwich, Connecticut and pretend it was my house. And I met these guys and they were all good, particularly I noticed this one camera guy was really, really good. I knew he was getting shots that were the best shots ever. Natalie and I didn’t need to tell him, he just knew what to get. But I’d never socialized with any of them. And they were all very quiet and professional when we worked at Natalie’s house, but then we go on these cruises, and at the end of the day, just like everybody else on these ship, we go to the bar and have a cocktail. And then after that, we go and have dinner at one of the fabulous restaurants on board. And the food on board is really good. But – these guys, all of them – turn out to be hysterically funny. So, at the end of the day, you always want to relax, have a good meal, have a glass of wine. But it also happens that you’re doing all of that with people who are hysterically funny. But also, we’ve all worked at the same places. We’ve all worked at the Food Network, some of us have worked at Good Morning America, many of us have worked with the same talent. Many of us are fond of or not fond of the same talent. So we would, I guess you would call it “gossip.” Sit there and talk about, “When I worked with so and so…”, what happened. War stories from our collective careers, which really overlapped. I think this was the most fun I’ve had of 14 years shooting the show.
Do you ever think of retiring? Or is it still too fun to quit cooking on TV? Is there anything you’re looking forward to doing?
SM: Here’s the thing, it’s very interesting you should ask that. Every year for the past five years, my partner who owns the show with me, Natalie Gustafson, she’s the producer, I’m the talent food producer. Every year, I say to Natalie, “Do you want to do this again?” Because she does the bulk of the work. She has to find the places, she has to set up all the logistics, she has to do the budget, she has to hire the staff, she has to work with the staff, she has to do the editing, she has to find the editors. She has so much to do, and sometimes it’s really, really stressful. And every year say to her, “..because I’ll keep going”, and just about every year, she says, “Y-yeah, let’s keep doing it.” Because we’re exactly the same age. She’s not doing anything else besides this, and all I’ve got is Milk Street right now and that doesn’t take up my time. I think we’ll keep doing it as long as we keep getting the money, and as long as we keep getting enough money. This year for example, we got enough money that Natalie didn’t have to do all sorts of extra things, she could hire people to do those extra things. And believe me, we do not have a fancy budget at all! There’s no frills here.
What has life been like lately? What is your typical day now, versus three years ago?
SM: I did look at that interview and I noticed I was doing watercolors. And I’m still trying to do it. I sort of have a love hate relationship with it, but it’s still something I’m trying to do. I don’t do it as much as I should or could. I’ve got to learn how to enjoy it more and stop worrying about it so much (laughs). But the other thing I’ve taken-on since my birthday in February is piano.
Did you play piano before?
SM: I played piano for 10 years when I was in elementary, high school, and then I stopped playing. And I was in the choir at church, I loved signing in the choir, but I got to the point where I didn’t think I could read music. And I just thought, let me go back and revisit this. You can get a keyboard, it’s not like getting a real piano. So, I did, and I’ve really been enjoying it and I keep waiting for it to kick back and for me to be like, “Oh! I could play anything! Now I remember!” Jarring the memory of where all the notes are. And slowly it’s coming back. But more importantly, unlike painting, which is so fraught for me, because I want to do such a good job I worry about it so much, piano is just like, “Yeah…whatever, this is sort of fun.” So that’s the only new thing. Other than that I’m doing some traveling, doing some events. Jacques Pepin is turning 90 on Dec. 18 and the Jacques Pepin Foundation, his daughter and son-in-law have been promoting “90/90”, which is 90 dinners in honor of Jacques to raise money for the foundation.
Yes, I’ve interviewed Jacques and it came up and it’s a reminder to do a reconnect.
SM: I think they’d be very interested in talking to you because back then they were doing the initiative of people doing recipes for their online recipe cookbook to raise money for the Jacques Pepin foundation. And what the foundation does, is, it helps little cooking schools and community centers around the country, to essentially teach people how to fish, particularly people who are financially insecure, either previously homeless, previously incarcerated or just in bad financial shape. But this initiative with restaurants, they’d asked me if I would team up with a restaurant and do this and I said, “No, but I think you’re missing low hanging fruit, which is – home cooks. You should encourage home cooks to do dinner parties to raise money.” It’s not so much to raise money, but to continue to raise awareness about the Jacques Pepin Foundation. So it was my idea, so I did a public service announcement on May 1 on social media. I’ve been a lot of social media, too, which I think I was doing when I talked to you; I started doing videos with my niece. Although then she moved away, unfortunately, so it’s not going (laughs) as smoothly, but I did an announcement, and then I did my own dinner two weeks ago. That took a lot of time and energy. Somehow, Bill, the husband you just saw – because he has all sorts of projects – unlike the husband you didn’t see (laughs). I only have one husband, but we both have a lot of projects. We’ll look at each other sometimes and say, “We’re very busy.” And then we joke and say, “We’re very important.” But it’s all little things.
I’ve been watching Julia on HBO, as I am always trying to fill what became a post-Downton Abbey void of light shows. Have you ever watched it? What do you think of the creative turns that show takes, you having known Julia personally?
SM: I hate it. I absolutely hate it, with a capital “H.” I hate it.
Because it’s so untrue right?
SM: Yeah, and I’ll tell you the thing specifically I don’t like. They totally vilify Russell Morash, who was her producer. I will say, she did refer to him as “The Ayatollah”, but that was because he was very exactly, and was all about excellence. But she loved him and he loved her. He was very important in just how well that show did, and they were fabulous partners. And they make him out to be this male chauvinist asshole. And he went on to do other great shows like This Old House, The Victory Garden. He had great successes, but his real legacy is The French Chef. And when [Julia on HBO] came out I tried to reach out to him; he was totally besmirched. He and I had been in touch about 10 or 15 years ago, I had lunch with him and his wife Marian. I’d worked on her show and her cookbook, which was The Victory Garden show. And I love Marian, she and I worked together on Julia’s show with Russell. I reached out to say how sorry I was and how that was not who he was, and it was just so wrong. I never heard back from him, and apparently, I found out through other sources who had been in touch with him in more recent years, he was devastated by that. It’s like, “How dare you? Just for shits and giggles, just for fun?” Just to do something different, just to heighten the drama and vilify somebody who was not that person. So I hated that, hated that, hated that. I stopped watching after a while. There’s a point early on where she’s still trying to get the show, and again, Russell is one of the monsters. They’re sitting in a room, it’s her and a bunch of men and they’re trying to tell her, “We don’t understand why we should do the show, come on.” Essentially they’re saying, “What’s so special about you and look at you, you’re not anything to look at either”, they didn’t say it quite like that, and she says, very demurely, “Yeah, I know.” That wasn’t her, the girl had a spine, the girl had guts! Yikes! She was never a milquetoast, she was never “roll over me.” Her dad financed the show…no, he didn’t! She was paid to do the show. And some of the characters were not the characters. And that’s not the end of the world, that I wouldn’t have minded so much, but it’s those two things in particular.
I’ve always wished for a straight movie about her, just her.
SM: There was a very good documentary.
The one on CNN, right?
SM: I guess that’s the one. Yeah.
I wish there was just a movie about her, because life is interesting enough, you don’t have to make new drama. I wish someone would make a movie about her and just her.
SM: Well, Julie and Julia was pretty good, but it wasn’t just about Julia. It was based on the book that Julia wrote, so it’s her words literally used in that that are uttered by Meryl Streep.
That’s what I meant, a movie just about her, because I would always fast-forward the other and only watch the Julia part.
SM: I get it, I get it.
What are you cooking lately, in the warmer days of summer? Any easy dishes lately?
SM: Oh, it’s interesting you should bring that up, because, I don’t know about you but I go through periods of time where I bore the bejesus out of myself, because I just make the same old things. And this is true for a lot of home cooks, I don’t know so much for other chefs. Left to my druthers I’ll just cook French food. Nothing wrong with French food, but I get bored. So I’m back at a point where I am printing out recipes from the New York Times that look interesting to me. And trying to make other nationalities’ foods, just other dishes, trying to stretch my imagination. I’ll tell you something funny about cooking seasonally. First of all, I don’t think tomatoes really come into their own till August, and also I have to say, tomatoes, even the ones the ones you get at the farmers market, just haven’t been good recently. I don’t know what’s going on. But for my dinner party for the Jacques Pepin Foundation fundraiser, I made a completely not-summer menu. Here’s what I decided, because I was nervous, because I had some chef friends I was inviting, and I invited my crew who works on my show, I invited friends, I didn’t invite strangers. I only charged $100, but I decided to make what I make best; what I can do and not worry. So here’s the most inappropriate menu – the entrée was braised short ribs of beef and red wine sauce. Wrong! For July 12, come on! What was I doing! I didn’t care, it was my party and I’ll do what I want. And I made Spätzle which is German pasta, which is fun, and soaks up all the yummy gravy; it’s all about the gravy. I did make one appropriate thing, which was ratatouille. So that was the only thing that was appropriate. And for the dessert, I should have made like a fruit galette or something like that. No, what did I make? A dish of mine that I love, it’s individual desserts, it’s warm chocolate cheesecake. Everybody got their own personal warm chocolate cheesecake. Pretty much right of the oven, It’s not just warm, it’s hot. And it’s ooey-gooey and yummy. Most people don’t think about eating a cheesecake hot, it was a mistake that I ate it when it was hot, when we were testing it. And then everybody agreed, I think it might have been the hit of the evening, even though they’d already eaten a lot of food. We had oysters on the half-shell with mignonette, fried zucchini, ok that’s seasonal, in a beer batter with lemon aioli, smoked salmon rillette on toasts and gougeres, which you and I talked about, I looked at that interview. Which is something I rediscovered during Covid. You know how everybody found something they wanted to make? And I came across Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for gougeres, where you make them ahead of time and freeze them raw. They’re little mounds that you freeze raw and you can cook them from the frozen state. I planned the whole menu so I could make a lot of it ahead of time. Obviously not the oysters, that was a little stressful.
Are there any tips you keep to stay slim as a chef? Do you have any food that you omit, like when people go gluten-free or dairy-free? Because I often think of you now, when I make soup, because you said the husband buys into that soup meal. I often think that’s how you stay so slim.
SM: You know, I just love you for saying that I stay slim, I definitely have gained five pounds since the pandemic and currently I’m working really, really hard. It’s very hard after menopause for women to lose weight. Extremely hard. My sister who is now retired, but she was a doctor and her specialty was women’s health, and she said, “Sarah, that’s really the problem – it’s just so hard for us, because our hormones, our bodies just sort of settle down with what we’ve got. So, I am working very hard to lose weight, which means that I’m walking like crazy, because I can. But also, I don’t eat white carbs, I just don’t eat carbs. I don’t mean I don’t eat them, but I wouldn’t make it for dinner. So I don’t eat rice or pasta, not that they’re not wonderful things – rice, pasta, noodles., white potatoes. We eat a lot of vegetables and the husband’s trying to lose weight too, although he’s pretty trim. So tons of vegetables and make sure we have protein. But back to inappropriate things in the summer, we still probably have homemade soup once a week. And it’s usually just taking what’s leftover in the fridge and throwing it together.
I’ve been eating sourdough, like when I interviewed Jacques, I asked, “What’s your favorite food?” He said “bread and butter” and I thought he was kidding, he wasn’t. So you never crave just bread and butter?
SM: Oh, it doesn’t mean I don’t crave certain things. My favorite thing, if somebody said, “Last meal?” that kind of question. It would be stinky cheese, probably roast duck in a red white sauce, White Burgundy and Red Bordeaux. It’s interesting, there’s lots of wine involved in my last meal (laughs). I love stinky cheese, I love cheese. Cheese is my thing I love. It doesn’t mean I don’t crave it. I love bread, I feel so sorry for people who truly have celiac. If I gave up wine, and I’m not saying I drink a ton of it, but if I never had any wine, I’d probably be thinner. I have it every day at dinner, so that would probably help. I’m still very healthy.
[KLCS has had the pleasure of speaking with Sara Moulton several time over the past six years. Previous interviews are available here: 2019; 2022]
Sara Moulton is the host of Sara’s Weeknight Meals; Season 14 premieres Saturday, October 11 at 2:30 PM on KLCS Public Media. Check out our schedule for the full broadcast dates and times. KLCS members can stream past seasons of the show on-demand, visit KLCS|Passport to watch or join. You can follow Sara on X/Twitter, Facebook, or on her Instagram.
