Meet Hudson Valley Culinary Mavericks: Nerds With Knives

INSIDE+OUT: Where are you both originally from, and how did you wind up in the Hudson Valley? 

Emily Clifton: I was born in New York City and was a die-hard city girl until 2012. Matt was really the one who encouraged us to move to the Hudson Valley. I’d never lived in a house, never had a driver’s license, and couldn’t sleep unless I could hear at least two sirens and a bar fight. Now I love it here and would never move back. 

Matt Clifton: I’m a Kentish man, as in Kent, England. You’re a “Kentish Man or Woman” if you were born on a certain side of the Medway River; otherwise, I’d be a “Man of Kent.” I moved to New York in early 2001, and in a few years, I’ll be as American as I am English, so I will try to stay true to my roots. Where I grew up was very bucolic, with orchards, hop fields, and a lot of woods — the Hudson Valley isn’t so very different. We visited Beacon 12 years ago, fell in love with it, and moved up from Brooklyn that summer to rent the house we now own.

INSIDE+OUT: You both clearly have a passion for food, travel, and photography. What inspired these passions? 

Emily: I’ve always loved cooking for people, even before I had any idea what I was doing. I would cook for all my roommates. I was the master of the tipsy post-club late-night snack, and my specialty was making kimbap with whatever leftovers we might have. Growing up in a very multicultural environment, I took inspiration from the cuisines around me (Korean, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Jewish) and found ways to incorporate them in my own kitchen. 

I’ve always been an artist, and I have a Fine Arts degree with a focus on printmaking. After school, I got involved in the film industry and focused on that, building a career as a film and TV editor. But when we started the blog, I wanted to take better photos of our recipes, so I bought a DSLR and learned as much as I could about food photography. 

Matt: We don’t get to travel nearly as much as we’d like, but visiting my family in the UK and France is a great excuse to wander and discover new things. If we can go somewhere off-season and barely see another human soul, so much the better. There are whole swathes of Scotland and Wales with more sheep than people. Our dream would be to live on a rocky outcrop of the Shetland Islands.

INSIDE+OUT: When and what prompted you to start Nerds with Knives? 

Emily: Originally, we started Nerds with Knives because we were cooking our second Thanksgiving dinner in Beacon, and I couldn’t remember what I had changed from the year before in the recipes I was working on. So it really was just a way for us to keep track of dishes we were cooking for ourselves, and we didn’t expect anyone else to ever really see it, except for maybe our moms.

Over time, I got more and more interested in developing my own recipes, and Matt worked on finding a voice for writing about food. I also became obsessive about the photography aspect of it, and then it morphed into what it is now. It’s always been (and hopefully always will be) an honest depiction of the food and recipes we are interested in at any one time. We don’t really do “niches,” we just cook what we like.

Matt: A huge part of it is still, “Would our moms enjoy this?”

INSIDE+OUT: If you can get a thumbs-up from your mom, you know you’ve nailed it. Is this a full-time job or a passion project? 

Matt: We both have day jobs, which means we can’t blog as often as we’d like. It’s just the two of us working on each recipe, cooking, food styling, writing, and photography, and we’re starting to add video now, so there are a lot of spinning plates to keep track of. 

Food blogging is such a competitive thing. It’s nice to have people who come back to us time after time, but most readers will just do a web search for the dish they’re after, and you have to grab their attention quickly. We want to be really proud of every article. We both love history and like to include information about certain ingredients and where dishes originated. The most important thing for us is that the recipe absolutely has to work. If we can have fun making it and writing about it, that’s great too. We get to spend a lot of time working together, and that’s the best thing.

INSIDE+OUT: Tell us about your books, “Cork and Knife” and “The Ultimate Dutch Oven Cookbook.” Who is the photographer and the recipe developer? 

Emily: I develop most of the recipes, but we cook them together and adjust both flavor and technique as we work. It’s really important that we both feel confident that every recipe is as good and as accessible as it can be. For Cork and Knife, which is all about cooking with different alcohols, it was really interesting to research and develop recipes for spirits that we didn’t use so much. We had a backlog of ideas for wine, beer, sherry, and brandy, but figuring out what recipes would really shine using tequila, sake, gin, and rum required a lot more imaginative thinking. It was honestly so much fun playing with those flavors.  

I’m the main photographer and food stylist, but we shoot together and have worked really hard to develop a style that feels right for the kind of cooking we do. We obviously want everything to look delicious, that’s first and foremost, but we eat everything we shoot, so we don’t rely on any tricks that would make the food inedible. It’s actually a real challenge for some things that taste delicious but might need a little visual help.

I’m very proud of the photos of the recipes and the shots we designed for the chapter pages. For The Ultimate Dutch Oven Cookbook, I wanted each chapter to evoke the sensibility of Dutch still life paintings — soft, directional light on a table laden with the ingredients used in that chapter. It was challenging, but I’m really happy with how they turned out.

INSIDE+OUT:  How has Nerds with Knives evolved over the years, and is it what you expected?

Emily: Over time, we’ve become much more focused on precision and clarity in our recipes. It’s really important to us that if someone takes the time and spends the money to make one of our recipes, it comes out as expected and, hopefully, even better. A few years ago, we contributed recipes to the website Serious Eats, and we learned a lot about recipe development from Kenji Lopez-Alt and Daniel Gritzer. They both have a very scientific approach and that attention to detail is so important.

Matt: The blog was very free-wheeling for the first couple of years. We’d write about chickens and gardening and Arya’s favorite kitchen chair. I think it’s evolved into a resource that people enjoy using, but we’ve hopefully kept our voice. I know when we started, we didn’t expect to get a readership, so it’s such a great feeling when we get positive feedback.

INSIDE+OUT: Tell us about your team, Arya specifically. 

Matt: As you’ve intuited, Arya is the real brains behind the operation. She’s a rescue from West Virginia, and we adopted her a month before we moved to Beacon. Now she’s a 14-year-old grande dame who mostly just dozes, but she’s never lost her knack of hanging around the kitchen as we’re cooking, waiting for a morsel to accidentally fall to the floor. We just adopted a second pup, Hazel, who’s taken over as head of security. Other than that, it’s just the two of us, unless we try out something new on our friends who become official taste testers. 

INSIDE+OUT: Let’s talk about the food and drinks! What are your favorite recipes and can you share a few with our readers?  

Emily: Pollo a la Brasa was a recipe based on a classic Peruvian chicken dish with a marinade of garlic, spices, and lime. It was something I ate many times over the years in New York City. It’s usually prepared on a rotisserie but we adapted it for chicken thighs, which roast until they turn golden and crisp. It’s served with the most addictive tart and creamy green sauce. It’s really delicious and we get a lot of love for that one. 

Matt: One of my favorites is a recipe for Scotch eggs. It’s an essential food in Britain, certainly for picnics but also just as a casual snack. It took a lot of experimenting to get the outside really golden and crispy, but keep the egg yolk soft. This was one we blogged about one SpringSpring when we had a ton of eggs from our hens. Now, of course, it’s winter, and the hens are useless, and storing eggs is expensive, so it seems like a little bit of a luxury. 

INSIDE+OUT: A note for our readers…both recipes will be share soon! We can’t wait to share them. 

INSIDE+OUT: What are some of your favorite Hudson Valley Restaurants? 

Matt: We eat at Toro (Korean and sushi) in Fishkill pretty much every month. It’s become our place to sit and talk about the things that are really important to us, over some hot sake. Everything we have there is great. Our go-to lunch pick is Beacon Daily. Best fried chicken sandwich in the valley. 

We’ve been blown away by what the chefs at Stissing House (Pine Plains) are doing. And we’ve had amazing experiences at Cafe Mutton in Hudson, and An Artistic Taste in Harriman. One of our very favorite restaurants, Gaskins, in Germantown, just closed at the end of last year. We went for Halloween, dressed up, and took a menu home with us for posterity. They were always so, so welcoming, and the food and drinks were just amazing. We miss it so much and can’t wait to see where their chefs end up. 

INSIDE+OUT: We were devastated to hear Gaskins was closing – a true Hudson Valley gem! What dish could you eat every night and never tire of?

Emily: Either Pasta with sausage, broccoli Rabe, and cannellini beans, or crispy miso salmon with a cucumber avocado salad.

Matt: Gobdol bibimbap, preferably from Toro.

INSIDE+OUT: Give us a favorite seasonal ingredient that you love to incorporate in your cooking for each season: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.

WINTER – Broccoli rabe and all the citrus we can manage. We make a lot of lemon curd.

SPRING – Ramps: we haven’t been able to grow them, so rely on friends who know a good patch. Oh, and rhubarb, which is such an odd plant but wonderful cooked up and made into ice cream or used as a cocktail flavoring.

SUMMER – Eggplant and tomatoes. When we have really good garden tomatoes, we just slice and salt them for sandwiches for as long as the season allows.

FALL – Brussels sprouts – roasted well with olive oil. And all the hard-skinned squashes, the weirder, the better. We’re still working through last year’s Black Futsu harvest; they’re delightfully warty.

INSIDE+OUT: What music do you like to listen to when you cook?  

Matt: We listen to a lot of Broken Bells, I love their energy. I have back pain and I can’t stand still too long, so I spaz around while I’m at the stove. (I call it cook-ercizing.)

INSIDE+OUT: Name three things you always have in your fridge/pantry? 

Emily: Kimchi, kewpie mayo, and sherry vinegar

Matt: Kosher salt, milk for tea, and tater tots.

INSIDE+OUT: What was the most memorable meal you’ve had, and where was this?

Matt: That’s a tough one. There are so many, and it’s not even the fancy restaurant visits that stick in my mind. Any time the two of us travel together, we have great food experiences. Eating lobster rolls in our car, in the rain, on the coast at Kennebunkport. Driving in South France, picking up lunch bits and a bottle of wine from three separate shops, finding a random picnic spot, and carving up our saucisson and bread. Or the restaurant in Hudson, which had a very conceptual tasting menu where one of the courses was just a large breakfast radish. (I think we stopped to get pizza slices after.) Emily has a photographic brain for meals, so she’ll give you a really specific answer.

Emily: Cafe Mutton, where we shared crepes and a crab and Boursin omelet. Or Stissing House – we shared buttermilk fried mushrooms, scallops with green garlic butter, braised short ribs, and hake with caviar. 

INSIDE+OUT: If you could have a meal with anyone (dead or alive), who would you invite to your table?

Matt: I think I would be too shy to invite proper chefs to eat with us. We had tea with Mark Bittman a few years ago, and while it was fun, I did wonder, “How can I possibly say anything intelligent about food with this expert at the table?” Honestly, I’d be as happy as I could be if I could get my whole family to sit around the table for dinner. They’re scattered around the world, and I don’t get to see them as often as I want to. And maybe Nigel Slater, I could at least talk to him about gardening. Oh, and Michael Palin. He seems like the sort of person who would listen attentively to everyone at the table.

Emily: Plus, Vivian Howard and Nigella Lawson

Matt: Absolutely.

INSIDE+OUT: What are you most proud of when it comes to Nerds with Knives?

Emily: There’s nothing more gratifying than when someone lets us know they made one of our recipes for friends or family and they loved it. Especially when they maybe weren’t the most confident cook, and this success encouraged them to keep cooking. Also, when someone says that one of the photos looked so delicious that they had to make the recipe. It’s so cool.  I’m also really proud of how we’ve learned to work together as partners, both in the kitchen and studio. It requires both clear communication and open minds. Mutual respect is key. 

INSIDE+OUT: What is your current state of mind?  

Emily: This is a challenging question. We’re having a really difficult and worrying time in our country. There’s a lot of misplaced anger and fear directed towards people who don’t deserve it. Honest, hard-working people who just happen to have been born in another country. Or who happen to be trans. Or Jewish. Or gay. Hell, or just female. It can be really hard to feel positive in a climate that encourages and rewards bigotry. What keeps me going is the knowledge that the more you know about people, the harder it is to villainize them. And one of the easiest ways to learn about people is through their food. It’s really hard to hate a culture that makes something you find really tasty. I hope. 

Matt: Oof. It’s February, and I get seasonal affective sadness. Ask me again in Spring.

+ + +

Portrait of Emily and Matt by Meredith Heuer @meredithheuerphotog

Photos courtesy of Emily Clifton @nerdswithknives.com

Follow/Connect with Emily and Matt via Website | Facebook | Instagram

Links to Purchase Books via Website