Today's program has been brought to you by Underground Meats, an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a birth pizzeria in Brooklyn. Bookwick, Bookwick. I wish it was Bookwick, that would be awesome. Imagine if this is just all bookstores out here. Yeah.
But it would all be hipster books. Bushwick Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined as usual, Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. No Piper today. Piper is working on the Sears All Project, which is fully funded.
Joined also uh although listen, people, I gotta be honest with you. Like that's the that's the goal we set. But uh Stas, tell them tell them the sad truth. If we only make our goal, what happens? We barely break even.
Not even yet. Yeah, it's not about breaking even though, it's about getting Sears all to people. But uh we got some exciting news uh on the Sears All. Talk uh a little bit uh later about some things that we're gonna add to stretch goals maybe later today, some ideas that we're working on for it in case you people care. For those of you that don't know about the Sears All, the Sears All is now definitely gonna happen because our Kickstarter was funded.
Go on Kickstarter and look at it if you haven't already. It uh it's an attachment that turns an ordinary torch into a powerful handheld broiler that can finish all kinds of low temperature. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, especially if you're at home and you don't own a deck broiler. If you own a uh a circulator, you should probably own a Sears all, right? When you see that Joined in the studio with Jack and Joe today.
How are you guys doing? We're good. We got Evan here too, new engineer. Hey Evan, how are you doing? How you how are you enjoying the show so far?
Oh, it's fantastic. It's nice. See, it's like stuff, you know, like if Nastasha was an engineer, she'd be like, I don't really know. I don't I'm not paying attention, I don't really care. That's what she would say, right?
Oh wow. Yeah, yeah. I guess that's why she doesn't have that job though. Well, he's in the honeymoon period, so great. Okay.
Uh a little update uh quick from uh Tom Fisher's uh the ongoing saga of Tom Fisher's eggnog that's been aging. By the way, Stas, our eggnog's been aging, right? Yeah, we tried it yesterday. Oh hey, thanks for letting me have a taste. But listen, there uh in fact I was you could have given me a taste when we were loading out.
Anyway, uh the uh I I'm also I probably ruined the eggnog because I said I was gonna bring in nutmeg and I didn't. It's okay. Yeah? Yeah. Why are you not a huge fan of like?
No, no, no, we can do it later. Yeah, but do you like a lot of nutmeg or no? Yeah, I do. So how was how was your uh stuff? It was good.
Just a little skin coat. It was good. Was you no, was yours better or Piper's better? We threw his out. Oh boom.
As soon as Piper's like away working, you like talk about his eggnog like it's garbage. He said, I s we had a clean out of the fridge yesterday. And I said, What about this? And he said, It's garbage about his own negative. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we can't talk crap about uh Piper on the show because as he says, my mom listens to this show, which I don't think she does. At least they don't have internet TV and the stuff. He's just trying to make us feel better.
It's like classic like salty sailor piper talk there, right? That might be true. Makes no sense. It might be a good show on Heritage Radio, Salty Sailor Piper Talk. Yeah, except for the fact is is like he would just stare the microphone down.
Like you have to talk into it, Piper, because the people on the other side can't see you just staring, glaring at the microphone. You know what I'm saying? Yep. Anyways. Uh so anyway.
So back to Tom Fisher's. Uh for those of you that uh didn't hear the other episode. Do you want to talk about the Mo Fat event first? Well, let me finish the Tom Fisher thing. I can't believe like I'm actually trying to be on task for once, and you're like trying to pull me a tangents.
We'll do that in a second. Um, and by the way, we have in the Nice, now I'm now in my brain. It's on a tangent. Thanks. We have some actual underground meats in the studio with us today that uh Stas and I are gonna start tasting during the break and then continue tasting after the break and talk about it.
So very excited about that. Uh anyway, back to Tom Fisher's eggnog. For those of you that don't remember, uh Tom Fisher was making an egg uh an aged eggnog, and we talked about the safety of it and then whether or not it would thicken up. In fact, it has thickened. An update on the aged eggnog from a few weeks back.
As the recipe indicated, it has thickened and turned from an off white to a slightly beige color. Was yours also beige? Yeah, it was beige. Uh you know, Booker, my son, has to wear a uniform to school every day. Like, and it's this year it's maroon and khakis.
And if you don't wear a uniform, he you get detention, right? Which it frightens him because he like he takes a bus home and he's worried he's gonna miss the bus. And he's like extremely nervous about this sort of thing. Uh anywho, so he he calls khakis kahakis. He's like, are these kahakkies?
I don't want detention. I'm like, yes, yes, Booker, those are kahakes. Anyway, so slightly beige color. However, milk fat is separated from the eggnog and floated to the surface. It looks and acts and tastes very much like uh like the thickened cheese like milk fat that rises to the top of unhomogenized milk.
Should I strain it off and move on? Or is there something nasty going on here? There are no odd smells or tastes. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, Tom Fisher. Uh Tom, dude, don't strain that sucker off.
Whisk that fat back in, baby. You want the fat and the egg, no, you like did you get a uh crap on top? No. Well, if you had, wouldn't you whisked it back in? Yeah, you they uh you missed the you missed the important third choice there, Tom.
Stir that stuff back in. Uh, you know, it's interesting. I don't know why it destabilized, uh whatever. Just stir it back in. I'm sure it's delicious.
Uh I did have an okay thing. Is this our first one thing since Thanksgiving? Yeah. Wow, it seems like so long ago. How was your Thanksgiving stuff?
Good. It was good. I saw you posted uh like the entire family searing on the Sears. Yeah? Yeah, they really loved it.
Yeah, I like that there's a picture that Nastasha sent me of her mom using the Searzole, and then the the caption, which not shareable in public, of what she was shouting while she was using, unrelated to the cerezol, by the way. Like completely like like a diet tribe completely unrelated to the actual series. No, it was because my dad was like, you need to hold it close. You need to hold it close. And then she was like She like went off.
I love it. Like, can you can you share any of it with us? No. No, you know what she said. She did her famous F you speech.
You know, uh the uh the apple doesn't fall far from the tree on this one. And one thing I've learned that Piper somehow is not for years working with you is like when you're using the Sears all, like trying to give you pointers, I'm like, Piper, are you dunce? Like you don't t you don't tell Nastasha how to use the Sears all while she's using it, right? That's a non-start. Right.
It's a non-starting, non-starting thing. Uh by the way, do we have Pierre on the phone yet? Yes. We do? Oh, awesome.
So listen here. So uh let's get Pierre on the phone. Uh we're joined uh via phone today. A good friend of ours, Pierre Cham, who is uh uh a chef here in New York and also uh, you know, from originally from Senegal, has what I think is the only at least the only, you know, one that I know of that's you know, good uh Senegalese cookbook in English uh on the market here in uh in the US it's an excellent book it's also beautiful the pictures are beautiful and having gone to Sen he he was the the chef who sponsored the trip that we went over to Senegal uh which was uh fantastic trip um and anyway Pierre uh uh glad to have you on the show how you doing hey Dave I'm well yeah good good I by the way uh you know I was reading uh I had a qu the reason I called you today is uh we had a a question regarding um TB gen coming in and so I figured which by the way for those of you that don't know like it's kind of the national dish of Senegal wouldn't you say Pierre? It is the national dish.
You wanna you want to describe it really quickly for the folks? Uh Chebujan is a wall of wood that translates simply rice and fish but it's a little more complex than that. It's um I would say it's kind of a version of a paella you know if you go to the north of Senegal that's where you see some other seafood involved with it. But the simple Chebujin is really a a fish a firm white flesh fish could be a grouper could be a snapper sometimes blue fish you know it depends. And it's stuffed with a parsley mixture.
The fish is stuffed with a parsley mixture and it's cooked in a broth that has tomatoes and all the vegetables that are cooked that comes with a chewin must be root vegetables yucca sweet potatoes cabbage and um okra and then the that same broth we cook rice in it. So the rice is cooked in that slow red tomato broth and it comes with the uh the the rice comes out right bright red. That's why I was making the connection with fire. So um that's basically what it is. You have a rice, red rice, a fish that's stuffed with parsley, uh parsley mixture, and the broth that has uh cooked first all the uh root vegetables and the fish and it finishes with uh a a ta such a tamarind actually.
So it has a uh uh uh uh a sweet and sour end to the to the whole to the whole dish. Right, but they also like the the the characteristic like when you go to Senegal, right? Or the the what's amazing is the different kinds of uh fermented products. Yes, absolutely. Right.
So I mean the geg with without the geg you don't have yourself a t bajin, right? No, no, no, no, absolutely, absolutely. You you're getting deep there, but you're right, the geg is a a big component of the chewujan. When you cook that broth, you add the geg to it, and um and uh the the geg is in the in the in the the tomato broth that I mentioned and uh the yet as well, another uh fermented conch. The geg is a fermented fish and the yet is a fermented conch.
And both of these add that umami flavor to the chewujan, and that's very, very important. You just put a a small portion of the get because it's very very potent and very very strong. So that's that's what uh makes that uh fermented flavor to the chewujan. Right, it's potent and strong, and for people who aren't used to it, it's you know, they're like a little freaked out by the aroma, but it's the stuff is straight up delicious. The yet, especially, I mean the geg you I guess you can eat the chunks straight a lot, but the yet I can eat that after it's been like braised, I can just eat it a lot of it.
It's good. I love it. It's it's uh it's an acquired taste for some people, but I mean you and I, we we really are adventurous, and I love the gadget. The yet the yet is like, you know, it's it's has that chewiness, but it's also fermented, so it breaks quite quite easy. If it's cooked for a long time, it it it breaks and digests pretty easily.
It's delicious. I love it. Yeah, I mean, uh another but before we get to the actual question, since you know we have you on the phone, we don't get to have you on the phone very often. There's a lot of spices over there that I think have uh so I mean obviously uh you know, yet and geg are not uh vegetarian, but there's a lot of fermented products in uh in Senegalese food that are really, really, really good for vegetarian cooking that have not become popular with chefs over here. And I think the one that strikes pops right into my head right away is netutu.
Yes, absolutely. Netetu is actually it's a locust uh uh from a tree, right? It's not a a locust uh an animal. Yeah, it's like a legume uh pod from a tree, yeah. Exactly, yeah.
Uh we call it netetu, but the fruit itself is called nere. And after the fermentation process, that becomes metetu. Um and uh and also it's uh it's it's it's uh it adds an amazing flavor. It's very popular throughout West Africa, it's not only in Senegal, but you see it in in in Mali, in Guinea, even in Nigeria, and that's uh you know, it comes with different names, but that's the same exact uh uh um legume, fermented legume, and it's good for vegetarian. There's no no no no no animal in it.
Yeah, and uh I mean in rice dishes, in broths, it can all of a sudden you know how like a lot of times a vegetarian rice dish, it's sometimes difficult to get the kind of power of flavor and umami you want. Nettitude, bang. Delicious, right? Um uh it's amazing. You know, even you know, the uh one one way to prepare the netitude that I particularly like is in the south of Senegal in Casamas, which next time we definitely have to make it to that part of Senegal, Dave, next time you go to Senegal.
But you know how they cook it? They cook the rice, you know, uh just a simple rice, white rice, let's say, and at the end of the cooking process, when the water has evaporated, you open your pot, you the the cover, the cover of the rice, and you you dig a hole in the middle of the rice, and that nettetu, which you have uh mixed with onion to make it uh, you know, uh grated onion to make it into a bowl, a liquid uh uh uh uh a thick paste, and that thick paste is just buried in inside the rice, and you just close it back and you allow it to sit there for like ten minutes. No fire, just ten minutes. The the rice steaming with that nettetu, that nettetu bowl. I do you picture the the the what I'm trying to say?
Yeah, yeah. It's very it's very simple. But does it perfume the whole thing? Pardon? Does it perfume the whole thing?
It perfumes it perfumes the whole thing. It's uh and the netatou bowl itself has that uh a very, very flavorful rice slash cement. It's just an amazing I it's really difficult to describe. You have to taste it, but it's it's delicious. Could you could you do it in a rice cooker?
Oh yes, absolutely, you can do it in the rice cooker. Again, once the water has evaporated, you just dig a hole in the rice, in the middle of the rice, and you put that bowl of netatou that you mix with with onion, just simply knit it to an onion, you can add some chili pepper to bring some heat to it. But you make a small bowl, you know, the size of a less than a half of a fist, and you put it in the middle of the rice in and you close it back. Do you use the uh the powdered netted too, the seeds or the whole pods? The the powdered nitty too is fine, the whole pot is fine, but the powdered nitty too, which is easier to have here in New York, you know, in the African market, and that's all you use, the powdered nitty, and that's why you add the onion, because the onions bring that the the the the juice of the onion would make it into a paste into uh you know and the and the paste you can for for shape it into a bowl, and that little bowl is the what you what you put into the rice.
Right. For people who go out, and I hope they do go to you know fine local African markets and buy the netitude. Do not judge, do not judge what's gonna happen to the food you cook based on the initial dry smell of the netitu. It's totally different once it's cooked. Completely, completely.
Yeah, that would I would not I mean don't smell it, I guess. That would turn you off. You know, it's very strong, like I say, it's very, very potent. But David, you tasted it and uh you know the difference. It's uh it's a drastic difference.
It brings so much flavor to any dish, any dish, vegetarian dishes, you'll feel like you know you you haven't had anything vegetarian before because it's strictly vegetarian, but it's so much so much flavor again, so much taste. And another thing over there that I thought was really interesting was uh they eat I don't even know the name of it, but these fermented onion balls, these dried fermented onion balls that are like they look like kind of crushed, they look like just chopped up onions in balls and fermented. We we bought them in a in a market. Yeah, and they they you know what they that's the one they add some nitty to it. They fermented are you are we talking about the one with it's already shaped, right?
Yeah, in a bowl or it's it's yeah, it's already shaped in a ball and dried, so it's very similar to what you're saying, just a dried version of it? Uh uh exactly, yes, yes, yes, exactly. Those are delicious. It's great. It's delicious.
Yes. I'm glad you remember those. Yeah. They they they're amazing. They're really amazing.
I didn't know they had the net too in it already. Yeah, that stuff is great. Uh it's amazing. Another another spice that you don't get over here very often that's more specialized for the cafe tuba. Although I'm I'm thinking I'm trying to get that on the menu at uh at Booker and Dax at the bar is the uh here's another thing.
Like Wolof words are impossible for uh English, you know, American English people to pronounce. I literally sat there for about 10 minutes with the seller, if you remember this, trying to pronounce the spice, and I would think I was saying exactly what he was saying, but I wasn't. Jar. I can't pronounce it. So like I don't how do you how do you say it in real life?
Jar. Jar. Yeah. Jar. Jar.
Yeah, and no, they're like jar. He's like, no, no, no, jar. I'm like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't get it.
It's impossible to get. It's funny. Yeah, you should you should I I can definitely taste your cocktails at the book and that's with that spice, is jar. I mean, uh, I need her. Remember Anita, she came to the festival with us.
Yeah, we're talking about Anita Lowe, by the way, folks. Uh, really amazing uh chef here in New York. Go ahead. Yeah, she had a special uh with the jar at her restaurant for for quite some time. It was very popular, and she made a salad with it, with beets and goat cheese.
Uh very, very creative. And cocoa, cocoa powder too. I I I was amazed by by the flavor. Well, the the interesting thing about it is it's got a lot of notes of it's got some peppery notes, but it also has some more resin notes and s almost some like a kind of uh almost I don't know, cardamomine notes and resin notes, but it's right but it's not at all like and people confuse it, it's not at all like what we call uh Balinese long peppers totally different totally different flavor it's not um and and I I I read in in English that uh the translation into English is get this one Pierre grains of Salim. But I don't know if that's true or false because you know what?
I that's the first time I heard about it at Anita actually she she mentioned that when she was trying to translate it on her menu. She did say grain of Salim but I didn't know that. You know I really didn't know and just I didn't know that's what it was called in English. But I you know it's called that in English maybe but no one uses it in English speaking countries so there's no point. I think it's much better to try and use the Woloff word.
The problem is none of us can pronounce it properly uh but you know they they use it there in the in the in the cafe tuba which is a great you know a great and very distinctive kind of Senegalese uh drink f uh the Morides uh you know the this Sufi brotherhood which by the way they're extremely uh they they're like why don't you you want to talk about the man it's not really food but give me give me a couple words on the Morides. Oh me oh you're talking about about the Mouri the Morides are like um a a Sufi brotherhood like you say Senegalese Muslims are mostly from two two families and they're all Sufis. Um you don't really have the traditional strictly Sunnis in Senegal and that's also one of the reasons why the the country is very tolerant because uh you know they they transcend the the strictly orthodox uh type of Islam as you you probably noticed they when you're in Senegal, you know, it's pretty you know, i it doesn't strike to you strike to you as like it's strict Muslim country. It's a it's it's it's a ninety percent Muslim country, but most of them are Sufis, you know, so they they are very tolerant of all the religions, you know, uh you know, it's uh it's also uh uh uh a lake country, it's not an Islamic country per se. So you can you have your drinks, you can have your you know, the the any the bars are open, you know.
Uh to make a long story short, the Murids are following uh uh uh a man called Amadou Bamba who who came to Senegal during the colonial time and he had a pacific type of resistance could be compared to mu uh to Gandhi in India, for instance. And uh and uh they they they they're growing, they're becoming they probably are right now the the largest uh Sufi group in the country. They're very powerful, they're self-reliable, they they they're very entrepreneurial. You know, you see a lot of Murids traveling the world. You see many of the people you'd see, the Senegalese you'd see selling in the streets of of New York City or Hong Kong or Paris are mostly Moorids and they they you know they they they uh that's uh like I said, entrepreneurial group and this coffee that uh we're talking about the drink that we're talking about, is called Cafe Tuba and Tuba is the name of the the holy city of the Murid.
You know, that's a city that's a couple hours from Dakar. The Murids believe that Tuba is uh is going to Tuba is as good as going to to the to Mecca, you know, the Murids go to Tuba, they don't go to Mecca in pilgrimage for instance. Um so basically that's uh you know, in two minutes, that's what the Murids are. Alright. And uh our question, by the way, uh to get back to the question if someone answered, the reason that we're on the uh on the phone together, uh they're gonna be talking about rice.
Now we yeah, as we said, Tibijan is rice and fish, rice incredibly important to it. Usually typically would have been made back in the day with broken rice, right? To thicken it up more than that. Oh, it is still make made in with broken rice in Senegal, but you can make it with with uh you know, with with regular jadmin rice or that's not the rice. But in Senegal, uh the the two Chebugen is with broken rice, yes.
Right. So that's gonna release some of the starch in while it's cooking, which is going to be important for the thing that's coming up. But before I get into the question, um, so for those of you that don't know kind of Senegalese geography at all, Tacazamans is in the south, right? And uh and you know what Pierre was saying, the kind of the heart of Tibou Gen is in uh San Luis, which is in the very north on the river, right? Yes, all right.
So uh or not the n or it's well it's in the northern part anyway, right? San Luis is north. Yeah, yeah, it is by the river, you're right. So um so the the point is is that in Casamance, what a lot of people don't uh think about is that the original rice of Casamance is not Asian rice. The original rice of Casimans is uh is Glaberima rice, which was uh actually domesticated um in Africa, and I think probably in Senegal and Gambia at the s right?
I mean that's originally where it comes from. Uh that's right. Now, those rices have been even locally, except for in small areas, completely uh replaced, unfortunately, and that's with uh with Asian rice, correct or not correct? That's correct, yes. Now would Thibu Gen originally have been made with the Glaberima, or would or is that uh in other words, do they would they also have had the Glabarima up in San Louis, or would it always there have been made with uh the Asian rice?
No, no, no. It was always the Glabarina until until colonial time until we started to import rice that originally came from the other part of the French colonial empire, like the whole Vietnam region, and now our rice is unfortunately imported. I think unfortunately because people prefer to import rice rather than using the local and it's in for imported from from Indonesia and you know Southeast Asia. But uh originally no the rice came from from Cazamas, from the the same region 'cause it wasn't only Cazamat and Gambia, but you know, you had the Glaberima is also in Guinea, in Sierra Leone, in in Liberia. It was the African rice, you know, and that rice is as ancient as far as uh you know um anthropologists are concerned, is as ancient as the Asian rice.
So, you know, so we have two families, two major families of rice, the the the African rice and the in the Southeast Asian rice. Right that came about the same time. You know, I don't remember because we didn't look at we didn't get to go to Casmans when I went there, but I don't know that we even had Glabarema when we're over there, did we? I I thought we probably didn't know. We didn't have Glabarima because again, like I said, the whole northern part of Senegal is is is i is eating imported rice.
Remember one of the reasons why we we we had this event is to we just pro promote local cuisine and to and to to to showcase what we really have and and and and and to change the the the the the people ways of thinking that when it comes from elsewhere it's better than what we have at home and that's unfortunately the case in in in in many of the cities in Africa, you know, we import a lot of our food and and and the local goods are eaten by the in the country by the by the r you know the rural area but in the urban areas people think it's best to order to import food from from from elsewhere and uh and the the Asian rice is still very very popular in the northern part of Senegal in Seneca in St. Louis in Dhaka and it's competing with the the tradition of the glaberima that because the Glabarima is still being grown in a very artisanal way. So it's not industrial it just comes a few months out of the year like a couple months when the harvest comes and then you know it's it's finished. But it's it's uh you know it's changing gradually now it's people are people are realizing that not only glabarema is healthier rice but it has a another flavor that you unfortunately you you didn't get to to experience when we were there. I'm trying to find a way to bring some glab arema here in New York and we will definitely have a taste of it.
Yeah sure you know get New Yorkers like uh like me that pay uh a premium for it and then maybe it'll get more respected where where it comes from except for then you might have the uh whatever when I was over there everyone was talking about the quinoa problem. You make something that's popular and then all of a sudden the people who make it and r rely on it can no longer afford it. So it's it's very hard to win. You know what I mean? It has it's hard to win but you know that's a good problem to have hopefully the quinoa experience will help us deal with you know with that problem before it it it it occurs.
But uh it's really something we need to to to to work on because that would be so unfortunate to to have you know cities like this disappear because of you know competition. They they great cities. Alright, so listen, we have a caller who's we're gonna we're gonna take them together, Pierre, whatever the caller's gonna ask. But uh then after that, before we go to break, we're gonna get to the question, which is about the crispy rice at the bottom of the T Bougen. Someone wants to know how to make it, and so I figure the best way is to get uh official Senegalese cook on the on the rib.
But LaCaller, you're on the air. Hello. Hey. Yeah, I have a couple questions on low time cooking. Oh sure.
Specifically I have a few friends that are pregnant, and I'm wondering uh about trade-offs and cooking to pasteurizer or being safe when cooking for people that are pregnant. Um and you know, balancing for like fish, beef and chicken against you know, texture and quality. Yeah. Um, and then also wondering about you know, storage guidelines for uh low temp cooking, so without a vacuum. Right.
So when I'm cooking for uh pregnant people with a circulator, which I have a lot, um when you're cooking eggs for Benedicts, just cook them at 62 for a full hour and they're good. You're safe. Um when you're doing any other meat cuts, I go to pasteurization temperatures. So like for a 55 degree steak, you're gonna want to let it go for probably uh I mean it's it's overkill, but once the core reaches uh the temperature, like a hundred and twenty minutes or something like that, that's actually overkill, but I like to overkill when I'm dealing with this because you don't want it to be your fault. So it's gonna take you sear the you sear the outside, uh, you know, you you and then you cook it.
Um it'll you know, a normal size rib steak will probably start its uh kill uh kill stuff within uh at the center it'll start killing within probably thirty you know, forty minutes or so, and then uh after it reaches that killing stage, you hold it for the hundred and twenty. For this kind of a thing, I really recommend getting one of the uh iPhone or iPad apps like Sous V dashboard or the you know the poly science one because they're good at uh just figuring out exactly based on the thickness, like how long it's gonna take to get to a temperature. When it comes to fish, fish is kind of a pain in the butt. It's impossible to pasteurize most fishes and still have them taste good. Uh fish is fish.
Uh and uh so uh ones that can tolerate it are the firm flesh white fish. So stripers are good. Um because you can cook a striper, you know, at 55, 56, 57. It's firm, it may be firmer than you normally like to cook it, but it's still it hasn't gone dry. And the meteor white fish like that are better when they're overcooked as opposed to uh, you know, overcooked uh, you know, tuna is wretched, or you know, overcooked salmon even at those temperatures is pretty wretched.
But a striper can kind of put up with that sort of uh thing. So those things can be um those things can be done. The if you don't have a vacuum, the question you know, you putting it in a ziploc, uh I you know uh it's hard for me to give actual guidelines for uh storage times. I've I'm always like when I'm cooking for someone, I'm kind of like just hyper about it. Uh when I'm cooking for either pregnant or someone who's, you know, i h hospitalized or sick.
So I tend not to store things for a long time unless I have to, because I'm the only person that can cook for them and I only see them once a week, and you should be okay for that, especially if they're doing a retherm. And if they do a re-therm, they can do like a temporary retherm in uh in like a really hot bath before they bring it up slowly to temperature, and you should be all right. Does that uh answer the questions? Um yeah, thank you. And and I'm in for a few dollars.
And what? Oh, really cool, awesome. Yeah. Uh sweet, sweet. Well, uh enjoy it.
Enjoy it. We're gonna we'll talk more about it either later or uh next next week about kind of some new uses we found and where we are in the uh in the thing. But thanks so much for backing us. Have a good one. All right, thanks.
Alright, Pierre, here we are, back on the back on the rice in the Tibu gen. Okay, so this word, which is wall off, which uh I will not uh will not attempt to pronounce X O O and then N with the N on it. How do you say that? The r crispy rice at the bottom. Horn.
It's cl close to the Spanish uh jota, you know. Oh man, that's that's that's impossible. It's that's impossible here. So to backtrack in case you know you're just joining in. So Tiva Gen, you take your rice, uh you take your fish, you slice it, you stuff it with uh like a herb mixture, you cook it a little bit with oil and onions, then you uh make a broth, and then you put the rice in you cook with tomato, you cook it with the broth and the root vegetables, the the rice soaks up the liquid, but in the bottom of the pot you get this crispy say that again?
And and for many people this is their favorite part, yes? Oh yes, it's uh it's a must. You know, perfect kibujen, you have to have that golden crust, golden brown crust from the bottom of the pot when you cook the chibujan, it comes on the side. And uh, and that that's really is a great way to enjoy your your chubby and it adds texture to it, it. It has that crispy texture to the to the to the moist rice, and um I I love it.
I really love it. That's so much flavor to it. So give me the secrets. Is it the the pot, the heat, the combination of the heat in the pot? Is it the oil that goes in the bottom?
I mean, I'm sure the oil has something to do with it, but just tell us like the secrets to get a good one. Absolutely, the oil, the oil and the pot. You know, when you when you cook it first, you start when you start the chubby and you start with the oil and the tomatoes. Right? You cook the oil and the tomatoes, allow it to cook slowly until the tomatoes are cooked.
You know, you could use tomato and tomato paste actually. And you allow it to cook slowly, slowly until the tomato goes from red to like really dark red, almost black. But you don't want to burn it. You don't want to burn it. But as you cook it, if you see that it's starting to burn, add water a little bit at a time, like a tablespoon to two tablespoons at a time.
But slowly, you know, that's before you add your water that's going to cook the rice and the vegetables and everything else. You have to cook only oil and tomato. Am I making sense here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So once you cook it to that point where the tomatoes are cooked and the sugar is released, because you should release sugar.
You realize you realize there's a caramelization that's happening. That's why the tomatoes going from red to almost black, but not black. You don't want it to be burnt again. But that sugar is going to that sugar combination of the sugar and the oil are going to be the the the the agent that will crisp your rice. Yeah.
And you know, there's there's uh like a lot of cultures have this love of the crispy bottom of the of the thing. In uh Iranian cooking, you have the you know you know, they have the crispy stuff at the at the bottom. Uh, you know, I think they they use binders like egg and yogurt in theirs, right? They cook it and then they do the egg and the yogurt. I forget, it's been a long time since I've looked up the recipes for that stuff.
And then also in South South Carol, you know, cooking of South Carolina, on the old style, which probably is all from uh West Africa anyway, uh, you know, though they have these crispy, uh crispy casserole rice dishes. The difference is Tibou Gen is not turned out like a like a like a casserole dish. It's like it's uh it's scooped out of the pot and then the crust is served separately, right? It's presented on a platter, yeah. It is served separately, exactly.
So separately, or if you eat around in a bowl like we eat traditionally, it's served on the corner of the bowl, you know. It's it's it comes on a platter, but uh you know they put it on the corner to to the people who will be eating the crust. Because not everyone eats the crust, you know. We try to like take it for, you know, the the mature people. You don't give it to the kids, you give it to the older kids.
So it's just the whole the whole cultural thing behind behind you know who's allowed to have part of that crust. Another interesting thing about the crust I'm wondering is is that you know, one of the strange things about uh about uh Senegalese cooking right now that I you know I just heard from you know listening to the we went to a seminar about it, uh is that people are using more and more oil, not for the taste, but just as a sign of being able to use the more oil in it. And do you think that's affecting the way that the the crust is being formed in general in the average Tibu Jan or affecting cooking in general in Senegal and the way things taste now versus the way they would have tasted uh you know eighty, a hundred years ago? It it is affecting it is it's affecting the way people, yeah, the way people are eating. It's for some reason it is seen seen as a sign of of um of wealth.
You know, it's the more oil you use, the more uh affluent you are. Um that's something that came up, I believe, also again in colonial times, and gradually when peanut oil arrives, you know, peanut oil at first it was palm oil for us, you know, traditional palm food oil was our our oil of choice. And uh and peanut oil became something uh pretty pretty popular with less year, you know, the French factories came and they made peanut oil, and peanut was also one of those uh you know crops that was uh people don't realize that peanut was was imported to Senegal. It was not uh a traditional Senegalese crop. You know, it came from the Americas as a matter of fact.
We had we had something similar to peanut groundnuts, you know, but uh it wasn't it wasn't as uh it wasn't used the way peanut oil is used right now. So anyway, it became a sign of affluence because again, you know, we want it to be like the colonials, so you know, as the colonials use that oil we use, the more we use, the more affluent we are. And it it can it came into our our recipes too, and now you see people using more peanut oil into their rice. And uh it came it also it also brought some some some diseases. Unfortunately, some diseases got imported with it.
You see um diabetes, for instance, which wasn't part of our you know of the illnesses that existed in Senegal. It's something that's very popular now because of that change of diet, you know, and uh the excess of sodium, all those things uh uh are uh ch uh affecting the the the the population uh unfortunately due to the change of diet again. But um the to get back to your question with the honey the crust and the oil, that's really the the oil is very important to it, but it doesn't have to be uh in excess, you know, it's important to have the first step to when you prepare that rice. The oil and the tomato starting the cooking process have enough oil but it shouldn't be uh, you know, more than uh a couple of tablespoons of oil, you know, for uh a a nice part of rice. And you cook it slowly, again cook it slowly before you add once the tomatoes are cooked and nicely caramelized, then you add your water, allow the water to boil and then you add the rice.
And you cook and you close the rice at that stage and you just close it and lower the the the heat, you know, to a similar just like you would cook regular rice. And you forget about it. Now don't touch that part until all the water, all the juice, that tomato broth has evaporated. Once it has evaporated, still allow it to sit for a moment and uh then you fluff your rice, you redistribute the tomato, you have your bright red rice and you realize at the bottom of that pot that crust, that cone that we're talking about has formed, you know. So you pull out the rice and with the spoon, you know, you just take out the crust, you know with you know it takes some some other strength to it but you pull out the crust with the and just rake the bottom of that part.
And that's how you get the crust, you know, just allow it to cook slowly. First of all, just again, and let the tomato cook and caramelize before you add the rice. And then do not touch it, do not stir it. Let the let the crust form in the bottom. Very, very, very, very simple process, actually.
Alright, well, beautiful, Pierre. Pierre's book has a recipe for Tibujan in it. Is Yolele, right? Yolele is still available right now on Amazon. It's got means it's the only one available, right?
It's the only one in English available, yes. And uh, yeah. And uh as a matter of fact, there's another book coming up next for we're working on it. Still uh uh the uh working title Senegal from the source to the table. You'll hear about it, baby.
All right, well, come come on the show and we'll push it. Absolutely will. All right, thanks, Pierre. Thanks for talking. Uh talking crust.
I can't pronounce that. All right, we're gonna take a commercial break and we'll be right back. Thanks, Pierre. Thanks, Dave. Underground Meats is an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin.
They use small farms from southwest Wisconsin to source their meat. The animals are raised on pasture for their entire lives by farmers who care about animal welfare. While underground meats uses European traditions, they also use ingredients from the upper Midwest to try to create new types of salamis, experimenting with both ingredients and techniques. The salamis are made using heritage breeds, mostly red wattles, tamworts, berkshirs, and mule Foots. Try their award-winning cured pork shoulder and goat salami.
To learn more and purchase products, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org. Or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. And we're back. Welcome to Cooking Issues, or welcome back to Cooking Issues. So we're tasting the underground meats, and uh let me get this straight.
The ones that they sent us are all they're all goat, you said? Pretty sure it's all goat salami, right? Yeah. Salumi. Goat goat loomy.
And so we're tasting what are we tasting here, Stas? That one is Pinocchio. You just had pepper. These things are good. These things are good.
Now, for those of you that don't know, Underground Meats recently had a Kickstarter of their own. Uh, and they have successfully funded it, and they are now gonna work on a hasset plan uh so that they can get Hassb certification, they can do challenge uh studies again, and then everyone can use it. So look for these guys to help anyone listening to create a hassle plan that's gonna allow them to um make their own salami business without having to go through all the expense. Which one's this one, Stu? That one is goat salami, just goat salami.
And then this one is sacion sec. That goat salami is good business. What do you think? I haven't had any yet. She had to take out take out her gum.
It's really good. Really good stuff. Alright. So I mean the obvious thing tasting it, I'm not gonna like torture you guys with sitting here eating. I'll wait until we're off mic torch and just sitting here eating uh delicious salumi.
Uh but you gave the web address, undergroundmeats.com. What undergroundmeats.com. Is that good? Yeah. So anyway, so the point is that um you taste it.
It's um, you know, most of them anyway, the ones that are intended are um a low acid product, which means a lot of times when you're having uh salumi or someone produces, they just try to uh they jack the acidity right away to kill off anything that's in it. And it also kind of covers up faults in the meat and faults in the curum, but from a very high acid kind of salami. You've had that happen before, Stas, right? When you eat someone's salami plate, it's just super high acid, lactic acid is. Uh and uh these um, you know, at least a lot of them from the ones I've tasted so far, don't taste like super high acid.
They're really taking a lot of care uh in it. Uh and you can you could tell that they really care about what they're doing. It's a delicious product. Stas is no longer gonna be listening because she's just pounding something. All right, all right.
All right, okay. Uh oh, we should talk about uh we should talk we have only a couple minutes left, I guess. We should talk about um the MoFad event. So MoFad, the Museum of Food and Drink, uh is doing its so we have the puffing gun, which is kind of going underground right now, but they're uh we're rejiggering it again to be able to take it to schools, hopefully after the um winter break. They call it winter break now, it's winter break.
Oh, by the way, if you're out there, uh, we don't actually have a way to send you a uh do you know I was realizing this on the Sears all uh on the thing that we're doing? That um we said we were gonna send people cards for Christmas. We don't have their email addresses. They don't Kickstarter doesn't give you the email addresses until the Kickstarter is over. So I don't know how the heck we're gonna do that we gotta we gotta figure that out.
I was gonna say we could send you you know, you still have a couple days left to purchase a future Sears All as a as a Hanukkah present for somebody, so if you want to but we can't say we can't send you a card saying blah blah, we can put one up that people can print out. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, this is a holiday card. Holiday card. Well, well, if someone buys it for Hanukkah, it's not a holiday card, it's a freaking Hanukkah card. If someone buys it for Christmas, it's a it's a and if someone has a generic holiday, then we will send them a generic holiday card. No?
Sure. No? Anyway. I mean, if you can be specific, be specific. If you cannot be specific, be generic.
No? Mm-hmm. Is that is that a bad thing? No, I well, we can do that. Okay.
Uh so uh we have uh we have a question. Oh museum. Museum food and drink. On Thursday, we have our first ever forum that we're running. Uh I'm gonna be the moderator.
So uh, you know, Peter Kim, the uh director of the museum there specifically tells me that I'm not supposed to interject any actual personal opinions into this, which is gonna be f it's gonna be very difficult. I'm not used to not interjecting personal opinions. But uh the whole point is is that we are um we're trying to have a debates wi about food where we actually get both sides of the argument in and not just freak show hacks, but uh, you know, uh paper tigers and whatnot to fight each other, but real as smart uh uh smart as and as good a people as we can get from either side of a debate to come together in a moderated discussion uh in front of people that we're gonna record and then um later make available to everyone who can't be there. And the first and one that we're gonna tackle is the soda van. And do you have the information for that, Steph?
Yeah, I do. So it's this Thursday, uh December fifth at 6 30 p.m. at the CUNY School of Public Health. It's free online if you go to roundtable.mofad.org. And it's hosted by Dave, and there's um Joel Berg from the NYC Coalition Against Hunter Hunger, Nicholas Freudenberg from the NYC Food Policy Center, some guy named Park Wilde from Tufts University.
Some guy. Well, I mean it's Justin Wilson for the Center for Consumer Freedom and Lisa Young from NYU. So it should be a spirited uh debate and uh, you know, it uh some guy. Some guy, some place, tufts. Some guy.
It doesn't say his position. Yeah, alright, alright. Anyway, so that should be fun, and we'll report back uh and tell you how to uh tune in to listen to the thing that's covering it. Yeah, I'm gonna be there. Sweet.
So uh you excited, Joe? I am. I'm really excited. Should I should I get all frothy at the mouth and like uh like we have to ch I've never moderated, I have to choose a moderation style. Do I want to be like the total like mellow moderator?
Do I do I go like Tim Russell? I don't think you can be mellow in this situation. But I mean, what do you do? Tim Russert style? You remember Tim Russert?
Be like um Charlie Rose. Yeah, that'd be good. What about what about Piers Morgan? No, he gets involved. But yeah, but like that's the thing.
Like that's that's about as least involved as I could get. It's probably kind of like a Piers Morgan kind of a situation. I would like to see you really try to not like people won't know either. You know what? Stas doesn't care about the actual quality of the event.
She only wants to see me squirm and not interject my opinion. That's the only thing she really cares. I know your opinion. Oh. I think you should show up in like an umpire baseball umpire uniform.
I take that route. I thought you were gonna say a yellow unitard. Well, that that would also be interesting. I don't dress in unitards anymore. Uh okay.
So uh we have that going on, and then we have to take a question in because uh I don't want to run out of time before we do it. Um here's the question uh from Zach in Pittsburgh. Uh I know you love stock. Please help me out. Some places say use roasted bones for a tasty stock.
Other places say use raw ingredients for a tasty stock. Obviously, they both can't be done at the same time, or can they? What's your take on the issue? Have a good one, Zach from Pittsburgh. Well, okay, look.
To me, they're just uh there's totally different, right? So if you uh a roasted uh meat, I mean white if you're making a white stock, you want to have uh I mean you need like maybe some bones in there for collagen, but you need some more meat to kind of uh bolster it. And by the way, on a non roasted uh bone thing, I consider if you cook a chicken, let's say, or or whatever, and you take the carcass from that cooked chicken and you throw that into a pot, that might as well be a white so a white stock as far as I'm concerned, non roasted, because you're not having any uh kind of brown on it. Now, in general, I don't know that I agree with this. I mean, they taste very different, but people tend to say that uh, well, look, it's obvious the browned ones, the roasted ones, have that brown roasted flavor to it, so you have that you know that flavor.
If that's the flavor you're looking for, then you need the roasted bones. Period. Uh now, if what you want is just clean meat flavor and you don't want all those browning things, then you can go for a uh for a white stock. I will say this. Most of the meat that we buy with before it's cooked is pretty flavorless.
And the reason it's flavorless is because it's usually well, it's not cooked. Uh, and it's also very kind of young. If you want to do a white stock, let's say a uh white broth of chicken, you're gonna want to get an old hen, a stewing hen, because that sucker, even if you don't roast it, is gonna have a delicious flavor. If I had a really delicious hen that you know was old, had been laying eggs its whole life and then stopped, you know, laying eggs so they popped it, and then you know, you have that thing to to cook. That guy, I probably wouldn't roast it because I would rather have the pure flavor of the chicken coming through.
If you're having a broiler chicken that's only a couple of weeks old and you have a bunch of carcasses of it, right, because you've used the meat for some other purpose because the meat's very tender because it's really too young and hasn't developed a lot of flavor, well then I would roast the hell out of those things because the fact of the matter is there's not much flavor going on in there. If you have uh, you know, you know, most veal we're roasting off all the veal stuff because veal really hasn't, I mean, I love veal, but veal really hasn't developed that much flavor yet. So you roast it and you get a lot kind of more flavor. If you have something that you don't necessarily if you're making a stock like pork, pork, you better cook that sucker. Like a raw pork stock smells kind of like raw.
Do you like a raw smell of raw raw pork stock stuff? I don't think it's we well really porky, but not necessarily in the way that like pleasing. Yeah. You know how there's like good porky and there's bad porky? And it never used to bother me except for when we went through remember we went through that period where we were boiling all those pork skins for making chicharolums and like all we smelled for days was the boiling pig skins.
So anything that reminds me of boiling pig skins, uh like anything that reminds me of like kind of also like I love tripe, but tripe before you prepare, like anything that kind of you know how they kind of have that bleachy weird thing from when they prepare like uh I love tripe though. But anyway, my point is is that like usually for a pork stuff, I'm gonna uh roast it off. Uh chicken, like young chickens roasted off. Old animals that have a lot of flavor, they can get away with being more purely the meat flavor. Now, yeah, you can always have the best of or the worst, depending on how you look at it, uh, of both worlds.
If you have if you have a like a really meaty uh meat, you can you can kind of mix and match, or you could get something in between. You could get the cleanliness of a white, uh a white stock, an unroasted stock, and then also uh get some of the brown stuff, just mix the two together. In general, if it is a bolstering effect you want, uh then I would use uh roasted. If it's a kind of meaty palette that you want to draw over and you don't want the extra notes of the roast, well then hell, don't roast it. Uh that's uh that's your choice.
Um anyway, I think you can do both. Uh especially here's one for you. If you want to do uh remi, so you what you do is you do an initial roasted stock uh in a in a pressure cooker quick and then do uh not a remi, sorry, a second stock. Uh then you could redo the stock with fresh meat, like you would for a classic kind of consume thing, only with more meat than you would for a classic consume, and then get the freshness of that meat out of it. That might be a good way to get the boast of both best of both worlds.
All right, listen, they're gonna kick me off the air, but on my way out, we got some good stuff coming up on the Sears all. If you tune into the Kickstarter, we're gonna put some stretch goals in. I think we're gonna give some extra screens as a stretch goal. Maybe we're talking about trying to include one of the clamps. We're gonna see if we can make it work.
We're gonna be talking about uh for all you Iwitani lovers out there, which is a type of torch, whether or not we're gonna be able to support the Iwatani uh in time for the Kickstarter to be over, maybe some European torches. Uh one more thing, I need your help. Tweet me in. I'm looking for a source for anyone who's from South America. Kamukamu, which is a delicious fruit that unfortunately also has a lot of antioxidant power, so everyone sells it as powdered kamukamu, which is gross.
I need kamukamu puree here in the U.S. If anyone has a source, let me know at Cooking Issues. Kamu Kamu Pure has to be red, has to be delicious, has to be puree cooking issues.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at heritage underscore radio.
You can email us questions at any time at info at heritage radio network.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.
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