Dan Pashman First Maeve... 

Maeve Higgins: Yeah?

Dan Pashman: Let's start with an easy one.

Maeve Higgins: OK.

Dan Pashman: Your official bio says that your favorite food is peanut butter. 

Maeve Higgins: Does it really say that?

Dan Pashman: Yes. 

Maeve Higgins: Oh my god. I just think I'm trying to Americanize.

Dan Pashman: This is writer and comedian Maeve Higgins. She's from Ireland, as you can probably tell by the accent, but six years ago she immigrated to the U.S. Now she lives in Brooklyn.

Dan Pashman: What's your real favorite food? Tell them....

Maeve Higgins:  Butter. Just normal butter. 

Dan Pashman: OK.

Maeve Higgins: Well, that's like my favorite substance. My favorite food is probably rhubarb tart or something, any kind of cake or tart. Do you know your national cuisine—Shack Shake, your national restaurant? 

Dan Pashman: Is that your perception now? That's so fascinating to me.

Maeve Higgins: It's so delicious.

Dan Pashman: Oh, I love Shake Shack. I'm not knocking it. I'm just that like—I still think of it as like a new fangled...

Maeve Higgins: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: So, it's interesting that your perception is...

Maeve Higgins: I feel like Shake Shack is the reason a lot of people move to America. They do this peanut butter shake that is like that thing where you feel kind of sick, but you also love it. It's like a punishment. It's like, I deserve this. It starts off as like a treat that becomes a punishment. It's like perfect for Catholics.

Dan Pashman: Right, I was gonna say...

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. And this week on the show, I go out to lunch with Maeve Higgins. Ahead of St. Patrick's Day, she'll talk about her complicated relationship with Irish-Americans and how actor Michael Fassbender helps her watch what she eats. Before we get to that. I want to ask you for a quick favor. If you listen to this podcast through the Stitcher app, can you please favorite The Sporkful in Stitcher? That really helps our show out and it ensures that you'll never miss an episode? Go ahead, you can favorite the show in Stitcher right now while you're listening. Thanks. 

Dan Pashman: Like I said, Maeve Higgins is a writer and comedian. I love her work and I'm especially excited to be having her on right now because she is starring in a new movie, which she also co-wrote. It's called Extra Ordinary. It already debuted in Europe to rave reviews and just came out in the U.S. Maeve plays a lonely driving instructor in rural Ireland who has supernatural abilities. She has to use her powers to free a young woman from a satanic pact. And yes, it's hilarious.

CLIP (MAEVE HIGGINS): Stop screaming. Shush, I'll help you, OK? I know this holding spell. Okay? You've got some herbs. Just be calm. Mark, this is going to keep her safe, okay? So, it's mainly rowing and sage and that's mainly that's a holding spell. Do you have any fresh basil and Tabasco?

CLIP (SPEAKER 1): What do they do?

CLIP (MAEVE HIGGINS): Um, we bought this frozen pizza and I was hoping you kind of pimp it? I'm starving.

Dan Pashman: Maeve is also a contributor to The New York Times and she's the author of Maeve in America, Essays By a Girl from Somewhere Else. In that book, she talks a lot about the big and small differences she's noticed about the U.S. since moving here in 2014. We met up at Yemen Cafe in Brooklyn, one of Maeve's favorite spots. She told me one thing she's had a hard time adjusting to here is the portion sizes and she's struggling with food delivery services. 

Maeve Higgins: Sometimes, I see see their ads on the subway and they're kind of like, "Cooking's for idiots," I mean, like this is just their summary.

Dan Pashman: You're paraphrasing. Right. 

Maeve Higgins: Yeah, but they're basically like, "Hey, loser, why don't you just like, stay online and just like, order Seamless and then we'll bring to your door?" And I'm always like, "Yes, sir, I will obey." And then I order Seamless and it's like always comes to $21, no matter what I do. And then I get it and it's like too much food. And you know that? Like, I'm really falling into like every trap.

Dan Pashman: We should get a waiter's attention and get some menus so back so we can...

Maeve Higgins: I'm famously bad at getting waiter's attention. 

Dan Pashman: Why do you think that is?

Maeve Higgins: Because of my weak personality. Like, it's my friend Claudia's favorite thing to do is to watch me try and get waiters' attention.

Dan Pashman: Okay. I guess I'm just gonna sit back and observe. 

Maeve Higgins: Okay but you'll be...

Dan Pashman: I'm gonna narrate. I'm gonna narrate you...

Maeve Higgins: So it's a problem. I'm working on it.

Dan Pashman: Maeve is now leaning to the side.

Maeve Higgins: And I'm...

Dan Pashman: Trying to get her head sort of into the aisle of the restaurant. 

Maeve Higgins: Physically, I'm waving.

Dan Pashman: And she can see..she has—well that's‚ Oh, oh, a big smile and a thumbs up...

Maeve Higgins: He saw me.

Dan Pashman: You got an acknowledgement...that was pretty good, Maeve! That was good.

Maeve Higgins: I mean. Well you didn't see. It was the waiter, pointed at himself like, "Me?" And I was like, "You!" So I think it might help that I have a microphone in my hand. Not because I'm amplified, because I look important.

Dan Pashman: Right. Right. You should—you can take that with you, Maeve. Why don't you just...

Dan Pashman: Our server Mahmud came to take our order. His father opened Yemen Cafe in 1986. Mahmud was born in Yemen and came to the U.S. in 1996. He's been working in the restaurant since he was a teenager. Then, I got to say, he did a great job selling us in a dish called, Lamb Honey. 

Mahmud: The ingredients are spices like paprika, a little bit of salt and like the combination of spices that we use for it. And we let it cook for like four to five hours but then we turn off the flame, let it cook for another hour by itself. So it becomes very soft, tender, fluffy, juicy, all that. And it falls right out of the bone.

Dan Pashman: We're gonna need one of those Maeve.

Maeve Higgins: I think so, yeah.

Dan Pashman: As we were ordering, another server brought us cups of lamb broth with a side of lemon and hot sauce. This is what every customer in the restaurant gets when they sit down. Mahmud says it's meant as an appetizer and also as a way to welcome people.

Mahmud: We tried to make everything that they do in Yemen. So if you walk into this restaurant like you walk into Yemen.

Dan Pashman: And that lamb broth—the fat sits right on the surface. Then the tart of the lemon cuts through it and the hot sauce has hot peppers, coriander, cumin, garlic—I mean, just the combination of the richness of the broth with the brightness of the lemon and the heat. I mean, then you get fresh Yemeni flatbread hot out of the clay ovens to dip into it. I mean, whoa. Then while Meave and I were eating the broth, a customer walked by and saw we're recording something and said, "Don't forget to talk about the tea."

Maeve Higgins: Okay.

Dan Pashman: Okay.

Dan Pashman: Don't forget to talk about the tea.

Maeve Higgins: Wait. What? What is the tea?

Customer: The Yemeni tea?

Maeve Higgins: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Tell us about it.

Maeve Higgins: Thank you.

Dan Pashman: Then he and his friend were so eager to have us try it. They just gave us their tea.

Dan Pashman: Oh, thank you. Oh, my God.

Customer:  This is Yemeni tea. That's for—actually when we eat like breakfast or lunch or dinner, we have to drink tea after that. So the tea is different from the south and the north. And the south Yemen, they they make the tea with the with the milk and they have—I don't know what the name for like—it's not like a spicy...it's like a...

Dan Pashman: The spice is cardamom. The tea was sweet and aromatic.

Customer: Yeah. They make it with the sugar already. They don't...

Maeve Higgins: Thank you for  giving us your tea.

Dan Pashman: Oh my gosh. Yeah, thank you. It's so good.

Maeve Higgins: Thank you.

Maeve Higgins: Last year I went to Iraq and I went to Iran. In all of those places, everyone is obsessed with tea. And it really reminded me of Ireland because like nobody will let you go anywhere without a cup of tea. I think that's really funny that just happened here because sometimes I'm like, is it something about my face that people just wanna give me tea? But it's actually just like a big part of the culture that like you're a guest in Iraq, if you're a guest in Iran, you will be treated like royalty.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: While we waited for our food, I wanted to spend some time talking with Maeve about a TV show she hosted in Ireland a while back with her sister. It was called Fancy Vittles. It was a satirical cooking show. In one episode, she talks about feeling insecure when she hosts a dinner party. This is the voice inside her head as she cooks.

CLIP (MAEVE HIGGINS' INNER VOICE): Is it your birthday? You big wagon. Inviting all your friends around to your house, dressed up like a dog's dinner so you can serve them that tripe, you call food. The carrots, you burned the carrots. You burned the carrots, you daft duck. You burnt the carrots.

Dan Pashman: In Fancy Vittles, you say you prefer cooking for a children's party over cooking for an adult party. Why?

Maeve Higgins: I just think it's just more fun, less pressure. You know?

Dan Pashman: Why less pressure?

Maeve Higgins: Well, because I got involved in this very serious scenario when I was back living in Ireland, where my friend was like, "Let's do a potluck." And these are all friends that were like 10 years older than me, like moms, and then they all happened to also be food writers. But I was like, "Yes, I'll just get to go and eat," but then it was the whole point of a potluck is that everybody brings something. And first I was like, "Oh, I'll just be like the charming one who, like, does something kind of funny and simple. So I would do like chicken with forty cloves and that's usually like, fine. But like in this crowd it was like, no, no, no. I'm not saying that that's why I left the country. But that was...

Dan Pashman: The dinner party that chased Maeve out of Ireland.

Maeve Higgins: And I'm still on the email thread because I won't let them leave me off it. And they do a recap. And it's just like that, that classic thing of, "Yes, we're friends but are also competitors."

CLIP (MAEVE HIGGINS' SISTER): Hello. And today we're gonna make fancy vittles for our boyfriends. 

CLIP (MAEVE HIGGINS): Yeah, our boyfriends, Or is that a christening in America? And this really old lady took me aside and she was like, "Men love cocktail sausages." You know? As if men are like these kinds of robots. You know? And how you—the code to work them is like it involves pork products and then manufactured... 

Dan Pashman: Alright Maeve, I got to ask you about another topic that you covered in an episode of Fancy Vittles. How is cooking for a group of your female friends differ from cooking for your boyfriend?

Maeve Higgins: First of all, I haven't ever been in a long term live-in relationship. So I know things can really degenerate there, where it's like, "Let's just get two pizzas," you know? Like I know that can happen. So like the stage I've reached, it's just like still just doing my eating nicely in front of each other, being careful with noodles.

Dan Pashman: You're still worried about impressing people, is what you're saying?

Maeve Higgins: Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah yeah. I mean, I live on my own and I love living on my own. But I do think the food that you eat when you're on your own is really like bizarro at times having like a can of sardines and like mashed turnip. And I was like, woah. I was like forget about impressing anyone or like, you know, "Oh, what if my what if Michael Fassbender saw me eating?" And then that's how I got to my new standards, which is whenever I'm eating anything, even when I'm alone, I imagine Michael Fassbender watching me. And then I think like, "Maeve? Is this OK? Should you maybe get up and cook for yourself?" 

Dan Pashman: Right.

Maeve Higgins: "Should you go and meet someone for dinner?" I just think, like, what would Michael Fassbender do?

Dan Pashman: And have you ever, like, started to eat a meal, then stopped yourself alone because Michael—you thought Michael might disapprove?

Maeve Higgins: Good question. No, you know what? I think I haven't stopped myself, I just felt bad.

Dan Pashman: So you're just like shoveling food in your face muttering, shaking your head, being like...

Maeve Higgins: "Michael will never love me now," as I'm like handing myself the butter. I think the most depressing place to eat is like on an airplane, don't you think?

Dan Pashman: I totally agree but I still can't help but eat. Every time I get on an airplane, I pack two to three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for myself.

Maeve Higgins: Really?

Dan Pashman: Yes, because well partly I get anxiety, like what if the flight's delayed? What if there's no food? What if we're sitting on the runway? Even if the flight takes off on time, now you're sitting in your seat and you're like, "When do I get my sandwiches?"

Maeve Higgins: It's so boring. 

Dan Pashman: "When do I get my sandwiches?"

Maeve Higgins: It's all you can think.

Dan Pashman: "When do I get my sandwiches?" So then, like we're still... 

Maeve Higgins: Meanwhile your three-year-old is like, "Calm down, Daddy." 

Dan Pashman: Right, exactly. She's like talking me off the ledge. 

Maeve Higgins: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: It's very rare that I can make it all the way to takeoff without eating at least one of my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Maeve Higgins: Oh my god. I imagine sitting next to you on a flight, just like this guy on edge and it's like he's only calm when he gets his little sandwiches.

MUSIC

CLIP (MAEVE HIGGINS): We're making Fancy Vittles for a family get together because it's our dog, Rigby, it's her five year anniversary. The anniversary of her death. And hopefully today people won't be super sad, you know, like it's been a few years since Rigby's death. So hopefully people won't be too gloomy while we're eating because, you know, you can't eat... 

Dan Pashman: I love the one you talk about whether it's rude to keep eating while someone's telling you a sad story.

Maeve Higgins: Right, I feel like when someone launches into like their first time seeing their husband after the divorce or whatever, your duty as a friend is to like put down your knife and for, to look at them. Really be like an active listener but what I like to do is be an active eater. When I've got like a plate of food in front of me, knowing it's getting cold, I find it really hard to focus. So I try and make syphoned food into my mouth while her eyes are blurry with tears. Or else I just like trying to hurry up the story a bit, you know? 

Dan Pashman: Right, right.

Maeve Higgins: Cause I don't want it to be cold.

Dan Pashman: Yeah, yeah. I know you got divorced but then what happened. 

Maeve Higgins: But yeah, I think that the most fun and open times I've had with friends are over food. But also that's like so loaded, right? Like cause that's when stuff comes out that things happen and it's not always the right time to be like, "Hey, I got mango sorbet." Like sometimes you just have to be like, "Oh now we're talking about Israel."

MUSIC 

Dan Pashman: Coming up, Maeve describes her perfect potato. And our conversation gets a little more serious when she talks about feeling disconnected from Irish-Americans, especially around St. Patrick's Day. Stick around.

+++BREAK+++

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. Comedian Fortune Feimster says she's always been a fan of food. In grade school. She joined the swim team just for the snacks. In last week's podcast, she tells me that as a chubby kid, who became a chubby adult, she often played her body for laughs. But in recent years, her approach to both comedy and food has changed.

CLIP (Fortune Feimster): I've certainly tried to be healthier because you want to live longer and and lose weight. But, you know, at some point you kind of are like, I'm always going to be a bigger version of a person. And at some point you do have to just be like, OK. This is what I am. I'm going to try to be better and try to make better choices and be healthy. But also, I'm not going to hate myself.

Dan Pashman: Fortune is a great storyteller. I think you're gonna love this episode. It's up now, check it out. 

Dan Pashman: Now back to Yemen Cafe and my conversation with Maeve Higgins. The food came.

Maeve Higgins: Oh.

Dan Pashman: Oh, this is the shredded lemon is boiling in this hot pot.

Maeve Higgins: Thank you.

Dan Pashman: Fantastic. Fossa. 

Maeve Higgins: Smells really good. No?

Dan Pashman: We got the braised lamb shank. That's the lamb honey, you heard about. We also got fossa, shredded lamb served in a vegetable stew. It came with whipped, fenugreek and more fresh flatbread from the clay oven to be dipped in the stew. It was all amazing. So good, in fact, that...

CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Alright, let's put the mikes down for a minute and eat. 

CLIP (MAEVE HIGGINS): Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: I sort of forgot to hold the microphones in front of our faces when we were talking about how good it was. Sorry, priorities. You'll just take my word for it. Anyway, after we finished eating we talked about the Irish foods Maeve misses most.

Maeve Higgins: I just miss everything dairy. I miss the milk, the cream, the butter and the cheese. You know, I have friends who are like, Ireland’s so green. And that's true but I didn't realize like as a direct result of all this lush green pasture, the cows are really happy and creamy and so the dairy is out of control. My mother's baking together with cream, it obliterates you. There's nothing you can do.

Maeve Higgins: I'm from a farming background, so...and I used to pick potatoes as a child. So I always loved, like brand new potatoes that are just picked. You know, what I mean by new potatoes? 

Dan Pashman: Like the small ones?

Maeve Higgins: Yeah, but like the first crop.

Dan Pashman: Oh, okay. Gotcha, yeah yeah.  

Maeve Higgins: Yeah. And them and butter and then I'm like so happy.

Dan Pashman: How do you like the potatoes cooked?

Maeve Higgins: Boiled in their skins. 

Dan Pashman: Do you salt the water?

Maeve Higgins: No.

Dan Pashman: Really?

Maeve Higgins: No, no, no. Okay. So new potatoes boiled in their skins and then you drain them and then put a tea towel on top for a while to get them nice and dried out and then you sprinkle salt on them and then you put butter on them and then you just eat them. It's—I mean, I'm not—I shouldn't even explain it. It's so basic. It's not like one of these intricate...

Dan Pashman: Wait, Maeve. Say it again slower.

Maeve Higgins: It's like one of these usual intricate, like, "Well, I'm from Kerala. So what we do is we, you know there's these sixteen herbs that only my family know about." Where I'm just like, "Get the spuds out of the ground, boil them up, put the butter on them." And I swear, I'm so happy.

Dan Pashman: When you go out to bars in the U.S., do you feel that people make assumptions about how much you're going to drink and what you're going to drink because you're Irish?

Maeve Higgins: Why? Because I fall off my chair? Well, the funny thing is I don't really drink. I mean, I have a drink, definitely, but not that much. And there's lots of aspects of the like Irish identity that I really like. We're storytellers, like we're messer, like we're gonna be joking around or whatever. But I think that drinking one is one I don't like because I can just—I've seen how really destructive it is back home. And here too, the biggest Irish-American event that happens is St. Patrick's Day. And that's just so associated with, you know, drunkenness and like white people falling over on the streets and stuff. And that's not what I think Ireland is at all.

Dan Pashman: Maeve thinks that when people leave a country, their impression of the place they left becomes frozen in their minds. We talked about this recently with Korean-American YouTube star Maangchi. This idea of an immigrant time warp, you have a certain idea of the place you left, but in reality, that place keeps evolving without you. And so do the people who stayed behind. Over generations, the folks who left and those who stayed grow apart. That's how Maeve felt when she saw her first St. Patrick's Day parade in New York.

Maeve Higgins: That was in 2014. And that they still did not allow gay people to march under their own banner. The year that they finally lifted the ban on gay people marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade was this was the year that, like Ireland was the first country, by referendum, to vote on equal marriage and to say like, "Yes, it's correct," like we were the first country in the world. So for that gulf to be there is pretty big. And like, I feel much more Irish than Irish-American. The Ancient Art of Hibernians or like the old men who run the parades? And I was reading about how they started and they started because Catholic churches would be burned down by nativists in like the 1830s.

Dan Pashman: This is when there was when Irish immigrants were being persecuted.

Maeve Higgins: Exactly. That's why the Ancient Art of Hibernians started off was to protect the churches. And then it came around to like 2005, 2006 where they were were bigoted against people joining their march. And I was like, "How did it happen? You were once victimized and now you're the one victimizing people?" So that really interested me. So that's where I was coming from, from the St. Patrick's Day, I definitely wasn't like, "Where's my green top hat?" 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Maeve Higgins: "Where's my fake leprechaun beard?" Or whatever, you know?

Dan Pashman: There is some part of St. Patrick's Day in the U.S., as much that's been bastardized and watered down, that is a sort of Irish-American Pride Day event. And I also think it's interesting because as much as it's become this sort of embodiment of like the worst stereotypes of Irish people, it's also, to me, it feels like kind of a symbol of the pros and cons of assimilation. You know? On one hand, to me, it's amazing to think that a hundred years ago Irish people were persecuted and were at the bottom of the barrel. You know, in the socio economic food chain. 

Maeve Higgins: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: And now there's a day where people who have no Irish blood at all, dress up in green and put on a four-leaf clover hats and wear shirts that say, "Kiss me, I'm Irish," and no words like, Sláinte and Erin go bragh, you know? Irish words and expressions, you know, and to think that that's where Irish culture is in America today compared to where it was. On one hand, I feel like it's kind of beautiful. On the other hand, it's such like a twisted bastardization of what real Irish culture is.

Maeve Higgins: Yeah and I think pride is like a tricky word. Right? Because, you know, when I was writing about it for the paper, I interviewed this cop. She was, you know, two generations back, Irish immigrant. And so she had never been to Ireland, but she had such a fondness for the country and she serves America now and is like a decorated police officer. And she talked about turning the corner, coming up to Saint Patrick's Cathedral, she like started crying on the phone during the interview because she was so moved by this idea that like her great grandparents had come over and that she'd made it this far and that she was being celebrated in this way. And she got to do this every year. And it was a huge part of her life. And like, I don't disagree with that or take away from that for a minute but I just think there's like more to it, you know? It's like you come somewhere, you fight your way up. And like the Irish really did, but like to do that, they had to, like, stand on others necks. And when I see that, that's what I worry about. That's really what I worry about with Irish-American, with Irish legacy here. You know? I also hear people being like, "It was tough for everyone. It's still tough now. That's the way it is. It's tough." And it's like, wait a second. When you know better, you do better.

Dan Pashman: How is St. Patrick's Day celebrated in Ireland versus how it's celebrated here?

Maeve Higgins: It's a normal day. It's barely celebrated. Like the kids do a parade sometimes, like a fancy dress parades but that means they are dressed like Spider-Man and Elsa from Frozen. And then the rest of it is just like, maybe my mom would make—she actually would make tongue or something. She doesn't even go full corned beef roast. She just likes to make something very traditional. And maybe we'd have that with cabbage in the evening, but barely. It's really not a big deal at home. 

Dan Pashman: So how are you going to celebrate St. Patrick's Day this year, Maeve?

Maeve Higgins: The Irish Art Center give out books at subway stops. So I always like going out at like 7:00 in the morning, handing out books by Irish writers to people on the subway. People go crazy for that because it's like, you're getting a free book, like you're just like on your way to work or whatever, or on your way to school and then, like some little Pattie pops up and is like, "Here's a book."

Dan Pashman: Right. Here's a copy of Ulysses. Good luck carrying this on.

Maeve Higgins: Oh, yeah. No, I would never. That would be counter-productive. I am making soda bread for my friends, actually. And then that night I'm gonna go and do a spot at this show. It's like this big show for Irish people for justice and equality. It sounds kind of dry, but I think it's gonna be really fun because Liam Neeson is gonna be there.

Dan Pashman: And you're gonna get so wasted.

Maeve Higgins: I'm gonna be so hammered. It would be really funny if like we set up this event that was all about justice and peace and how Irish people don't want to pull the ladder up after ourselves. We want to be part of the American dream in the best way. And then we just like showed up and just like had a fistfight.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: That's writer and comedian Maeve Higgins. Her new film is called Extra Ordinary. It is so darkly funny. I really loved it. And it's got a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so clearly I'm not the only one. It also stars Will Forte, of SNL fame. It's playing at Alamo Theaters all around the country and it will be up on streaming services soon. Get more info at crankedupfilms.com/extraordinary. We'll also link to it at sporkful.com.

Dan Pashman: Next week on the show, we explore the art of recipe writing when a recipe doesn't work, how do you know whether it's your fault or the recipes? We'll discuss. That's next week. In the meantime, remember to check out last week's show with comedian Fortune Feimster. And if you're listening on Stitcher, please remember to favorite our show. Thanks.