Today's program was brought to you by the Brooklyn Kitchen, a mom and pop operation since 2006. They provide the tools that shape our food culture. Visit them at 100 Frost Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or visit the Brooklyn Kitchen.com. I'm Linda Palacio, host of A Taste of the Pass. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn.
If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio 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 an empties Roberta Pizzeria. What the heck happened here, Stas? Jack?
It was uh it was their holiday party. So I came in here this morning and I saw these guys have been cleaning everything up. Nothing but um Papa John's and Domino's boxes. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's right.
Papa John's and Domino's. Yeah kind of irony. So the uh so you think it's like irony? You think they're just drinking PBRs? They make great pizza.
I also sell bottles of champagne, Stas. So what do you hear, Stas? No. No? God no.
I hate coming here. You know I love I love Robertas, but I don't I don't do their holiday parties. I uh it's just are you guys invited? Yeah, just a danger zone. Yeah, I believe.
Yeah. Now I have slipping to the danger zone in my head. It smells like a nasty bar though. Everywhere out there. What do you mean it smells like old cake beer?
Yeah. Yeah. Like we walk through. It's like they drank everywhere. Stas has her I hated college face on.
Yeah, Stas, uh aside from biscuits and anything, Stas is the like only person I know who didn't enjoy college. Yeah. Uh no offense to uh, you know, Leland Stanford Junior University. Or offense. Junior, right?
Or or offense. Let them take it. Yeah. Uh so anyway. Uh joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
And Jack Jackie Molecules over there, fresh back from New Orleans. How was New Orleans? Oh, it was so good. Did you have anything good to eat? I did.
I had a lot of good things to eat. Uh fried alligator for the first time at Cochon. Oh, yeah. Cushal, I'm sure does it well. It doesn't just taste like fry.
Cush is a good restaurant. I like that place. Yeah, a lot of boudin. Um everywhere. Uh you know, and then some like classic New Orleans places.
I did the turtle soup at a place called Upper Line. You know, it says they do it like it would have been done a hundred years ago. Yeah, did it did you feel that way? It was clovey. Yeah, it was really clovey.
Didn't have the sherry at the end? Yeah, in the sherry, yeah, it did. It's all about the sherry at the end, Jack. No share at the end, no love. No, it was good.
Yeah. You ever read the old uh documents on turtle soup and the different kinds of fat and the callop, what is it, calapash and calipea. Someone out there will be a uh turtle soup uh expert. I think may most people now just like, you know. I mean, I don't d were they kill uh they killed turtles in the back or they buy the canned turtle meat or what?
I'm guessing it's canned turtle meat. Yeah. I'm guessing. I don't know. There's well, if you look up uh what's the name of that book?
What's it called? It's out of my head. Herders is the place uh in Minnesota, and the guy it's called I think the Bull. Oh yeah, the bull. It's not bull moose, it's like but the bull something cookbook.
He has a bunch of them, and he's just this crazy, crazy like like a lot of weird sexism in it, a lot of weird stuff, a lot of like historical fallacies, but one of my favorite parts is where he tells you how to chop the head off of a turtle, uh, Jack. There are two different ways. Would you like to know the two different ways to chop the head off of a turtle? Yes, please. Well, the first way, 'cause remember, like a lot of times he's dealing with like a snapping turtle, right?
So uh you stick a stick out and they bite on the stick, and as soon as they bite on the stick, whoa bang, right? Chop the head off. That makes sense, right? Yeah. So what do you think the second way is?
Oh man, I don't know. Guess I I can't. Guess I'm not bite. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. No.
No. Stick its finger in the tail hole up near the butt area, and then the head pops out because it's like, oh hey, hello, and then bang, you chop the head off. Wow. Yeah. Tough way to go.
Yeah, it's a real tough way to go. Someone get someone gooses you, your head pops out of your shell and gets chopped off. You don't even have time to think about it, you know? No. It's not right.
It's not right. The thing is, is like the stick thing, right? It's kind of like why fishing is so is so well, old school fishing on a line is so interesting because you only get to kill the thing if it tries to kill something else. You know what I mean? Like only through the fish's own aggression does it become caught and eaten, right?
Which is why it seems kind of fitting, you know? And same with the turtle going after the stick. Turtle's like, hey, crap on you, stick, and then you have a cleaver, and you're like, no, crap on you, Mr. Turtle. You know what I mean?
Like that's uh that just seems, you know, poking your finger up its butt. I guess the turtle ends up dead either way. Uh but uh so sad news that happened uh was it last week? It was a one week ago. One week?
Yes. Yeah, uh about a week ago. About a week ago, we were um no one hurt as far as I know, which is good, but uh Sam Sam Edwards, S. Wells Edwards uh and son, we were trying to get them on the phone actually to answer someone's ham curing uh question, and didn't know at the time that they were like at that moment having a large fire. You do you have you heard anything about that, Jack?
Yeah, I mean, um, it's very sad. They're you know, they're not gonna be up and running for quite some time. Really? Like uh did they lose all their stock? Basically, yeah.
It's terrible. Yeah. So anyway, so um really good people too. Good people. Best wishes out to uh Sam Edwards and S.
Well S Edwards. Fantastic uh, you know, ham curing um you know, family. They've been doing it for generations and generations in Surrey, Virginia. Um they actually were one of the first people uh in the US that started buying uh a lot of kind of uh what I like to call better pork, like especially even like the Heritage Pork and Burks and stuff that uh Heritage Meats sells. Uh and when you lose your stock like that, it puts you out like a year.
You know what I mean? Like they have stuff that's over a year old. So it's not like uh, you know, you can just crank up and produce all the stuff that you had. You know what I mean? Not only that, but was it like I'm not sure which parts got burnt, but aging rooms take years.
You know, these big aging rooms take years to kind of get exactly where you want them. Uh and I remember once uh Sam Edwards told me that uh, you know, you could take him blindfolded into any one at the time. I think he had three uh different big curing rooms, and he said that they all had their own kind of uh uh feeling to them in terms of the uh microflora and fauna that live there that give the hams their um particular characteristics. And he said that blindfolded, he could tell you which one he was in every time just because they had all developed their own character. And so um Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, those those rooms are no longer now.
Yeah, it's like and if you talk to you, remember uh you know the Salamaria Belacy guys here in uh they New York, but now in also New Jersey? Like I talked to them years ago too, and like, you know, uh w one of the you know, things that you build up over uh a you know, a long period of time is a stable uh curing and um an aging room because like I say, like each one is unique and needs to be kind of built up over time. And so it's just really sad uh so even after like a year it's not gonna be l you know the same. I'm sure they'll get back on their feet and you know, uh, because they've been doing it like I say for a long, long, long time and you know, they're really good at it. But our our best wishes go out to them and um you know, I don't know if we are we do we uh is the radio uh are we doing anything or or is there any sort of uh Yeah, we're gonna continue to kind of talk about it.
It's very fresh, so we're just giving them a little bit of time. But um, you know, we work closely with them. It's one of Heritage's main accounts. I mean, like uh they were buying their hogs from from Heritage. Um so it definitely affected all of us and uh we'll definitely be reporting on it more.
I'm sure we'll follow up with Sam soon. Um yeah, well anyway, so I guess I'll take a crack at the at the ham question. Do you want to take a caller first? Yeah, sure, caller, you're on the air. Hey, it's uh Harry from Chicago Pacing.
Hey, how you doing? Good. Cell phone reception. You're uh you're cutting in and out a bit, Holmesek. See if you can move a couple of feet and then start uh start again.
Uh is better? Uh yep. So we're uh doing pastry and but I'm calling for Barker who is trying to make a non-alcoholic Negroni? He was saying between juniper and coriander and pine. He was pretty happy with like a gin component.
But was wondering if you had any advice on recreating kind of like a mock sweet vermouth or campari. Yeah. Well, I've done uh in fact, Jack, I don't know if we can search it, but we've we actually gave a recipe for uh a compari soda out. It was a couple of years ago. Um but yeah, we did like uh a compari variant.
So you can do um like a water-based um, you know, you just gotta go to you know, whatever. I don't know in Chicago where you get the stuff, but like, you know, here we have a couple of stores where that sell all of the various uh kind of barks and and roots and stuff. Uh so c you know, Calustian's here is one and uh dual specialty uh shop is another and a couple others, but I'm sure you have some sort of local joint you can go. Um I forget everything that is is uh in the compare because it's been a while. I think it's like uh genshin, right?
Try episode 165. It's coming up that you talked about compari there. Right to the listener, go back and listen. I've never tried to uh I've never tried to tackle a vermouth, right? So if you're gonna do a vermouth, there's a couple of things, especially if you're gonna do a vermouth for a Negroni, there's gonna be a couple of things that you're gonna need to hit.
One, remember vermouth is wine-based. Okay. So in order to get it right, you're going to need uh some acid in it. Um preferably similar acid balance that you'd get uh in uh a wine. So uh, you know, some some um tartaric, depending, perhaps some lactic, and perhaps some malic, depending on that, on the ratio that you're gonna get out there.
Um you could conceivably use uh grape juice because you're going to have to add sugar anyway because the vermouth is also sweet. In addition to that, you're going to have to figure out whatever herb base uh you're going to want to uh kind of mimic um the vermouth. So you're going to need those three components. You're going to need the herby component, you're going to need the an acid component, and you're going to need some sugar because it's not, you know, in a negroni, it's not uh, you know, typically a dry, um, a dry vermouth. It's also typically a, you know, a darker, uh, a darker vermouth.
And so you might want to get some kind of brown or matterized characteristics in there as well. Um now something you might want to consider when you're doing it, because you're if doing an actual negroni like it's a stirred cocktail, right, uh, in a non-alcoholic form, unless you add some super bodying agents to it, I just don't think you're gonna get the kind of viscosity out of it that's gonna make it drink, even forget the fact that there's no alcohol in it, but that it's gonna make it drink like it's a negroni. Um it's gonna have more of the bot like a uh it's gonna have more of like a like a juicy kind of uh body to it than a negroni would. What I would suggest is is going like a little bit lighter on all the flavors and doing it in the style of a carbonated negroni because the flavors of a negroni carbonate very well, and once you carbonate something like that, especially something with uh bitters in it. People first of all are used to um like uh you know this the sand bitter sodas, which are very similar to a compari or a comparian soda, and the addition of the gin components and uh the vermouth components, they carbonate quite well.
Uh and um I think you might have better luck with making something that has an uh uh the feel of a carbonated Negroni than the feel of a stirred Negroni, but that's just my my feeling. What do you think, Stas? You have any feelings on that? That's good. Yeah.
Jack? Cool. Yeah. All right. All right, well, good luck with it.
Let us know what happens. Uh shoot us a tweet at uh at Cooking Issues and let us know what happens, or go on the uh on the board that uh uh they have here at Heritage Radio. All right, well dude, have a good day. I you too. Um those commercials like Can You Hear Me Now?
Can you hear me now? Yeah. I can't believe that we still deal with the shitty cell phone reception like that. Well, you know, it's like you know, uh we we can't get anything right. Yeah.
Sorry. You know what I mean? Like we can't get we can't get like, you know, the simplest things can't get right. I'll give you an example. Today, I'm I'm trying to, you know, get here and the streets of New York.
Well, we did we did an admirable job like getting the city kind of cleaned up from the snowmageddon that we had here. It was like what, 26 inches or some some nonsense like this? Yeah. But I saw this idiot, not not even a private idiot, like a city paid idiot, like paid by the three of us. Like we're paying this idiot, right?
And I don't know whether this has any meaning to you, but he's plowing the street, right? And he's got the plow adjusted wrong. First of all, he's plowing in a rear-wheel drive pickup truck that doesn't have limited slip differential, okay, without weighing his bed down at all. So he's got this like hyper light bed that he's trying to drive a snow plow with, and and his back wheels, he doesn't have a limited slip differential on it. Then he adjusts his freaking plow so that it's too high up and he lets too much snow underneath so that he's running over like uh, you know, like uh three-quarters of an inch of slushed out snow, and his rear tires are just spinning and burning rubber, and he's going down the highway, uh down the street with his tires going like and the truck is only going like you know half a mile an hour or two miles an hour because it's the equivalent of just like you know crawling along because he's burning his back wheels up because he's a freaking moron.
Did you help him? I was late to come to the show. But what am I gonna do? Knock on his window, hey, hey, jerk, learn how cars work. You know what I mean?
Like, is that what I'm supposed to do? First of all, if you own a pickup truck, I don't know, is this is this being like stereotypes stereotyping people? But if you own a pickup truck, you're supposed to know roughly how vehicles work, no? I don't know. I don't know, I don't know.
I just don't know. And then, and then just to show like how crazy New York can get sometimes. A guy was was, you know, that you you know the term busker, Stasker? Oh man. But I'm sure, I'm sure, Jack, as a musician, you hate yourself some buskers.
Oh goodness, I hate buskers like Stas hates biscuits. Oh yeah! Boom! I hate buskers like Stas hates biscuits. Anyways, so first of all, first of all, first of all, extremely one of these dudes with the extremely loud, like tremulous, like, you know, trying to do the crooning loud voice thing.
And you ready for it? Rick Astley, never, never gonna give you up. I swear. I swear to God, I got Rick rolled in the freaking subway. And the dude, he wasn't, he was only off key every once in a while.
So actually, I was like, you know what? If you're gonna be a jerk, whatever, but like, it's the guy was louder than a set of freaking bagpipes. I could hear him two platforms away on a different freaking level. And like, like, we're sitting there, everyone's standing on the platform looking at each other, being like, freaking Rick Astley? What?
You know what I mean? It's like, like, I didn't have to just step through like a bunch of mire and slush to get here, and now I gotta get Rick rolled. Man. Anyways. It's no offense to Rick Astley, you know.
Um the guy, I didn't want to look over to see if he was wearing that long tweed coat that Astley isn't it tweed, or is he wearing camel hair? Remember, he's wearing like a long coat in that video. I can imagine it. Just Rickroll yourself and you can find out. Rip roll yourself.
I don't feel like I should be the only guy that has to freaking uh you know, deal with that. Anyway. Hey, quick, quick, quick shout out to Pedro, who was uh introduced to Sue V in the cooking issue show, and he did veal cheeks, eight hours eighty-two degrees, and man, it was so good he got a small tear in his eye. Oh he's very proud. I like that.
I like a small tear in the eye. You know, the uh I'm not gonna answer any freaking questions, am I? Like, like uh it's certain things when you get them, mostly for me, it's things that bring up like childhood memories. They can bring like a tear to my eye, like in a restaurant or something like this. Whereas Stas is the exact opposite.
Anything that reminds her of her childhood, she's like, I hate this. What about lemongrass? Yeah, I don't like it. I didn't eat it growing up. You just smelled it in the garden?
Yes. And then you had a universal hatred for it? Yeah. Did you get bit by something in the garden? What?
I used to chew on it, like, I don't know, just don't like it. Uh, crazy. Anyways. So like uh I remember a baby lamb I had like that at a very fine restaurant. I was like, or when I went to Danielle and they did the the Garridon, the ta the you know the table side service, but they did it so old school that I was like, oh, so old school.
That's when like you occasionally you want the hyper old school. Yeah. Something else I'm gonna mention real quick before I actually answer this question. Um I told you I bought this wet grinder, right? You remember you know what you but Stas, you remember the wet grinder that we made the uh used to make the chocolate and the uh and the and all the nut butters in and stuff like this.
Anyway, the one that I had broke, so and I'd never ever used it to make real uh real you know food with it that is it's intended to do, namely things like doses and iddleys and other and so you know for those of you that don't know like the doses like the cr the the So you you take uh Urad doll, which is like this like split, you know, um, you know, black gram that what's but it's you know dehuled so it's white, and you soak it and you grind it, and that becomes like a mucilaginous paste, and you mix that in with um idly rice, which is parboiled, so the starch is already somewhat um uh pre-gelatinized, right? So it's almost like using a precooked starch. Well, it is like using a precooked starch, and then uh, but it's dried, so you soak that and you grind it, you mix those two together. I did about three uh parts rice to one part of the uh of the doll. Uh, and you let it ferment for a long time, and it actually makes you can make these, you can make these crepes, which are name and you put fenigreek seed in it too.
You can make these crepes, which are like doses and they're crispy, or you can make these things that look like little frisbee pies, little um what are the you know what you what are those things called, Stas? Those little like they're they look like they're puffy, they're puffy, but they're like discs. You know what I'm talking about? Anyways, uh like an like an increstable. Remember those wretched things made by smuckers or whatever?
Oh my goodness, yeah. Yeah, they're look kind of like that. But anyway, but they're steamed. Um there's and they're delicious. Those are idlis, right?
So I've been practicing with this, but I've started, I just I've decided I freaking love this wet grinder because it's just such a pleasure to use. It's so quiet compared to like the Vitaprep. You know what I mean? It's just like grinding the stuff. Anyway, so uh Dax and Booker did not like uh plain uh idleys.
They didn't like them. Right. So I took uh we did the potato bar again over the weekend, as I suggested someone else they do. So I took some of the veg chili because for some reason Dax wants veg chili on his potatoes. And so uh I put the veg chili inside the idly and steamed it so that the inside of the idley was filled with chili.
So right there you have chili iddleys, chili idleys. Then, Stas, here we're gonna do. I put this on the Twitter, but since you don't read Twitter, I can I can tell you the same. We gotta we gotta rent something. We shouldn't actually just we really should.
We should rent at San Gennaro's, we should rent one of the booths and make Little Italy chili idlies. And if you could say it five times fast, I won't make you do it. Little Italy Chili Idlies. Have you ever done anything like that? What?
Like a street pop-up? Have you? Yes. Well, no, that's in your truck. That's a truck.
No, we did both. So I have actually served things at street things, but not for a long period of time. Never again. Well then you have to be able to say it fast. Can you say it even once?
Can you say it even once? No, I can't. Jack, can you say that tongue twister? Oh I had to look at it. Little Italy, chili Italy.
Little Italy Chili Italy. Ah, you're better. You're you're a you're a better man than Stas is a woman. Okay. She's just weak.
She's just sitting there like Futsing around on her on her phone, not even trying to say it. What car on Thursday? She's talking about her travel plans for Thursday with radio people who don't care. Did we get it? But we Stas, you have the entire rest of the day to discuss your Thursday travel plans with me.
The entire rest of the day. In fact, look, we're not even gonna have lunch here because there is no lunch here today. We're gonna be discussing that at any point in time. Maybe they're gonna be able to do that. We're gonna be hanging out at Booker and Dax.
We have a bar meeting people. I don't know if you're interested in that. After this, we're gonna go to a fantastic bar meeting where we have plenty of time to discuss. They always ask for more personal when it's like, but they don't care that you can't find a car on Thursday because they're not like hanging out with you on Thursday. They wish they were.
They might still have some Papa John's for lunch here, by the way. A true mom and pop operation since 2006. The Brooklyn Kitchen provides the tools that shape our food culture. They stock a curated variety of pots, pans, knives, small appliances, and other kitchen essentials. Their grocery department works closely with local farms and food artisans to bring you the tastiest fresh produce, dairy, and pantry items.
Their teaching kitchens allow them to offer a wide breadth of cooking classes, from knife skills to pig butchering, from cooking for couples to pickling and canning, from home brewing to pie making. Something new is always happening at the Brooklyn Kitchen. Visit them at 100 Frost Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or visit the Brooklyn Kitchen.com. I have a question that I think we missed in the fold here through email. Do you mind if I jump in with it?
Sure. Okay, cool. This is from Javier uh Gutierrez. I can't say it. Uh I'm another one of the crazy guys working my way through the archives.
I can only thank you for sharing so much knowledge and the many hours of entertainment. My question is related to making pizza at home. I want to create a uh Napoli style pizza. Okay. But haven't been able to make a dough that when baked is thin and light.
I've used many recipes from Reinhardt Heston and others, but none have worked for me so far. Do I need to lower the yeast content or increase the hydration? Or am I failing to make the pies thin enough to achieve the desired result? As far as the sauce for the pizza, what are important things to consider? I know in previous shows you've mentioned adding anchovies.
But what are other good ingredients to make a killer sauce? Would appreciate any tips, techniques, or recipe that works for you. And for background, he makes them using a technique from Heston Blumenthal's show in search of perfection, where you crank the oven as high as it goes, heat a large cast iron pan on a stove, move it to the oven to use as a base to create a good and fast crust. All right. Yes.
So, you know, okay, a couple couple of points here. I think uh, you know, what Jeffrey Steingarden always used to say uh is that the only important thing in a pizza really is the dough. Like, and everything else is just you know window dressing for the dough. Uh and if you don't focus on the dough, then um you're hosed, right? And most of the people I know that make uh really good dough, and this is the way I do it too, um the trick to it is extremely long fermentation times, right?
So, you know, a very small amount of yeast, fairly high, you know, not super high, but fairly high hydration and just very, very long rise times. So you can do that uh a num a number of ways, right? So you can start with uh you can start with a like a more normal, like the easiest way to do it. Uh, and then uh, you know, Math Matthew uh uh from um Motorino, he like he he actually called me out because what what I had done for many years was you'd make a dough that was relatively high in hydration. I forget what I owe not super high, like I was doing like I think somewhere in the mid 60s up to I think mid sixties to 70, somewhere in there, and then um you, you know, I would under yeast it, I would let it start rising, and then I would throw it in the fridge to retard it for like 24 hours or like you know, 18 hours.
I'd pull it out like four hours before I wanted to make pizza. I would make all the doughs individually. So like the night before, I would I would break all the doughs individually into uh core containers. I would spray Pam into the core containers, throw in the dough, cap them, and then throw them all in the fridge stacked so that I could pull them all out and then dough for dough, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, just go, right? That's how I would do it.
But then uh, you know, Matthew was like, you know, that's great, I guess, if you're gonna be a jackass. He's like, why don't you like why but like just use less yeast, and then you won't have to do the fridge retarding step. You can just let it go. So I, you know, I've I've tried scaling further and further back on the yeasts and just letting the rise time be uh longer and longer. Uh also I wouldn't hold back on the salt.
Salt is going to de is will decrease the yeast activity, but it will uh leaven over time. And I think most of the people who are doing, I don't know how they do it here actually, but I think most of the people that um you know I've spoken to uh you know who really like the the job they're doing, it's just a matter of either using a re uh or a retarding step in the fridge or uh just having a really long uh gradual rise time. Uh and I think most people use a fairly like on the wetter side of uh uh a dough. I know that Steingarden, when he was doing his uh stuff in the oven in his home oven testing, was using uh a very high hydration dough, like one that he could barely handle. Uh I don't do that, but um that maybe that's you know something you need to do if you're dealing with a more normal oven.
I don't have a normal oven, like I've jacked my oven so that I can get up to 850 degrees. Uh so you know I can treat it like it's a real, you know, uh pizza oven. Um the pan might work. He said, Jack, you said he had the pan upside down, right? Uh I believe so.
Have to, otherwise, what are you gonna do? I mean, what's the choice? Um you could get one of uh Chris Young's uh approved baking steels. I mean, Chef's Dev, they have uh that I tend to still use stone because my oven can heat up uh a lot of stone, really freaking hot. Um but anyway, yeah, use that.
Uh as for the sauces, I think usually minimal is better. I like uh thick sauces rather than thin sauces, but a lot of people, hey, what kind of sauce do you like, Sandra? You like thin? I like a thick, like not thickly, in other words, when I say thick, I mean the sauce itself has more of a pasty consistency, but you know, it's thinly applied. But Stas prefers a thinner sauce, but then you really need a good oven because you're adding a lot more moisture to the top, and the pizza won't last as long when it comes out.
And you have to apply less. The trick to that kind of a thing is just application of less crap. Like the less garbage you put on pizza, usually uh uh the better in terms of the texture of the dough. At least that's my experience. You stuzz?
And the other answer, by the way, two things that are that that that belong on most pizzas, a fried egg, just put on the top after the thing comes out. I love a fried egg on any pizza. I like thinly shaved, uh, very thinly shaved uh potato, like thinly shaved the potato, toss it in uh oil, salt, and pepper, and then just like throw it on. And I like that a lot. You ever had that, Stas?
Sullivan's used to do that. They used to make a really good. I've had really good potato pizza in uh outside of Rome. Like really good. Um, but I like it, just like thin, kind of shaved.
And but that what Stas and I like the most is greens on our pizza. It would have been our day though, it'd bring the greens, huh? And we're like, I know, like jerks. So here at Herbert's, right? Every day we're like every day.
Every Tuesday, we're like, can we get some greens on our freaking pizza? And they're like, we don't have greens. We're like, how about this kale salad that you have? Can we just and like and they're like, no, they don't want to do it for us. They specifically hate us.
So here's what we're gonna do. Next week, we're going to bring our own greens. It's B Y O G. We're gonna bring the greens, we'll toss them with a little like a vin a vinaigrette or something or something simple, and then we'll just put them on top. I like I like uncooked greens on the top of my pizza, right?
I like that. I like to smash it in, fold it in half, and have the pizza be like a freaking like salad pizza. See, like I I like that, but more if it's like a white pie, you know? I like it always. Yeah.
And I'll tell you what, I like I like strong flavored greens, I like arugula that way. You can tell your girlfriend it's good on the two boots uh Cleopatra pizza. Nice. Well, so if you FYI, it's uh Jack, you want to give them the FYI on the two boots? Well, the cornmeal?
No, not the cornmeal, the connection. Oh, FYI. I th yeah, I thought we talked about it on the show. My girlfriend is uh in the two boots family. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh well, so what the hell? You don't need suggestions in New Orleans. I forgot all about that.
Like they're New Orleans family. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and well, they're from New York, like New Yorkers, but you know, strong tied in New Orleans. Yeah.
Yeah. And by the way, uh in the chat room, Stas. We do care. Check out Costco Travel for cheap rentals. Thank you.
Oh everyone. Oh, oh, now Dave's just a bad guy. Dave showed us a real meaning. You are like, let's change the format and be more interesting and include more people. So that's the thing.
I don't want to change the format. I want to get some like so Jack. Most people. Yeah. I don't want to change the format.
What I want is to get maybe some like other style of guests in occasionally. To attract. I don't know. Like I gotta get someone to agree first. I don't know.
Like, who do you think would be interesting? Um, maybe I don't know. Like when we get guests, they're usually. Hey listeners, who do you want to hear on the show? Right.
They're usually a very specific kind of guest, right? So we'll get like, you know, Miravold or Chris Young or Harry McGee or Jeffrey Steingarden or Dave Wonder. So very like, you know, they're in the nerd realm, let's say. Man friendly. Whoa.
Man friendly. I didn't hear any females in that. That's true. Well, cup for cup. She that she came on once.
She said she hated Floridians. She did. Yes, which was awesome. Did Jordan come on the show once? Yes, yeah, she did.
She did. She did. She and Jordana Rothman. If you want to, if you want personal information, Jordana Rothman, who is a good friend of ours. Used to be the uh used to be the uh she wrote uh the most recent thing that she did that you should go buy is Alex Stupak's uh taco book, right?
Yep. Yeah. And um uh anyway, so she's been texting me pictures of Nastasia Lopez with like laser beams coming out of her eyes, like exploding Mark Ladner's head. Or like sounds awesome. Yeah, or Nastasia Lopez carrying already, by the way, a very scary butcher's knife, but also with like blood-dripping fangs.
Very interesting. Wow, she's very interesting photos I'm getting from Jordana. We got some other requests for guests here in the chat room. What do you got? We got Christina Tosi.
Okay, yeah. Well, who's uh who is that? That's a very doable. Yeah, yeah. Uh Donald Trump, not doable.
Uh David Chang, Alex Stupak, and Dave's wife. Yes. Yeah, well, we'll get her. We'll get her eventually. Okay.
So uh another thing is that Jack and I are talking about bringing the blog back semi-live. Semi live. Semi-live. In other words, like heritage rad. We haven't talked about it fully, but the the heritage radio would keep it from being like uh overrun by Cialis merchants, uh, right?
Um, which is for a long time it was like Cialis merchants, I think. And then uh and then we might occasionally start putting new live content on it just because I'm sick of not having that outlet, but they won't be four thousand word like, you know, posts on Nixonalization anymore unless I find myself like like unless I unless I feel compelled to do it. But um right? And then we go live, maybe we'll do the starch program on that. The starch, you know, the year of starch.
I've already started Stas is like I hate you love starch. You're the freaking pasta queen. So boring. What the hell's it boring? Everything you like is starch.
Hey, can we play that? It's a starch. It's a star. She likes a starch. Make it, make it, make it.
It's my favorite. We gotta watch that movie. I love that movie. Big night. Oh, so awesome.
I gotta call her on the line. Caller, you're on the air. Uh hey, Dave and everyone. I'm on the uh the ham questioner. Oh, here we go.
Patrick. Yeah. How you doing? Good, good. I started to pester.
I was just we're planning on hanging them this weekend. So want to make sure I wasn't having any mission critical errors. All right. Well, do you want do you want me to read your question so people know what we're talking about? I I have a question about uh uh hanging hams for equalization.
So equalization, folks, is after you do your initial salting phase, uh, the salt is not equally um permeated the ham. So you hang it for a little while and let the salt, as they say, equalize before you have the real um you have the real uh what's it called, aging process go on. Uh I have some hams that are currently curing in temperature controlled 35 degree chest freezer, uh, and I'm planning to remove them for equalization and hang them in unfinished basement. That is constantly roughly 50 to 55 degrees. Are there any pest countermeasures you recommend now?
I was planning to put hams in stockinets and hang them from the rafters. As the ceilings are low, they will probably end up only three to feet off uh three feet off the ground at most, three to four feet. I'm not sure how impervious the basement is to rodents. I'm guessing it's not, although the house hasn't had any food products in it for several years. I imagine bugs are less of a concern until warmer weather, but I don't really uh but don't I don't really know.
In the spring, I was going to move into a warmer zone for aging and coat in a fat rice flour mixture per b per Paul Bertoli's recommendations in the fantastic book, Cooking by Ham, which is a great book by the way. People don't read that anymore. Do you know that, Patrick? I don't think people read that book anymore. Good book, right?
Really? Yeah, I think great book. Love that book. Uh but it sounded uh like uh coating it in the equalization stage isn't a good idea because you want the moisture loss to uh continue now. They will not be smoked.
Okay, this is all excellent questions. So uh on the issue of rodents, uh, so I forget which one of the burgers, I think it was Morris Burger uh from Burger Smokehouse, once told me that uh, you know, when he was a kid, what they would do is they would hang the hams from uh very thin wires, right? Because rodents can't chew through uh wire and they can't climb on the wire. And so they would hang the hams on these like super thin wires uh from the rafters instead of from s from strings or ropes because the rodents could climb on those, but couldn't climb on just a piece of uh wire. He also said that when they used to cut slices out of the center of the uh, you know, the the the frying slices for it, they would rub lard on the uh faces as they as they cut it, mainly to stop the drying out to keep the stuff preserved on that side.
And he said that they used to keep the hams like that for uh a good long time. Now, they might have been um I'm pretty sure that they occasionally would smoke those things out um so that to prevent kind of you know pests uh from um going going in there. Now there's a couple of different kinds of pests you need to worry about, right? So early on, if you have parts of it that are still um, and I I think I wrote down, let me see if I actually did because I'm pretty stupid, I probably didn't. It's not here, shoot.
Uh if you go online, uh the University of Kentucky and the University of Virginia have very good cooperative extension websites on uh curing ham at at home. The guy who did uh Virginia Tech's one, I think it was Virginia Tech. Um I don't think it was, I think it was Virginia Tech. Um his name was Norman is Norman Marriott, and he has a lot of good information. And then uh Kentucky folks have a lot of stuff on on pest controls.
But uh earlier on you're gonna have problems with um uh you could have problems with uh flies, right? Uh like skippers and stuff like this. And so for that, the stockinets gonna help. But some people recommend actually once once it's you know done equalize it. You can't do it during equalization because it's equalizing and getting its you know initial kind of some of the moisture out, but they some people will wrap it full in paper, uh, which is still kind of like moisture permeable but not insect permeable, and so that's how they'll kind of do things.
But once you get enough liquid uh out of it so that the f the flies themselves aren't a problem, like the main problems that I've had with personally is with various different kinds of beetle and with uh mites, right? And so once you get mites in uh in your space, right, they're like there. You can't like you're not gonna you're not gonna get uh rid of them. You know what I mean? They used they used to use a um and and the name just went out of my head, and like I said, I I thought I wrote it down in the thing, but the name went out of my head.
I uh is you as you age, you just these things go out of your head. But there's something that they used to fumigate the actual hams with that is meant to be like a food grade uh fumigant, and uh, but it's been it's it's being outlawed not for a food safety reason, but because I think it's like uh detrimental to the ozone layer. So they they can't do that anymore. So there's nothing I think that you can spray uh kind of directly on the you know meat, except for they always say like rub a layer, like if you have an effective area area, cut it out, rub a layer of oil over it. Uh and some people put like like hard alcohol and then oil over it uh to try and kill uh the things um around there.
Also, like if you get a mite infestation or before you hang up, some people uh before you hang the meat, some people now will take like pyrethrin, like this, like which is like I guess from chrysanthemums or something, but it's like uh you know non-toxic um pesticide, and they'll like spray soak the uh the wood in the area with it to wipe out uh mites and stuff like that, and then they'll and I get I think it does mites, and then they'll hang it and they go. But like I've had mites develop, and you can see mites because they they make this powdery nonsense, uh, you know, where they're where they're like it's actually I think their bodies that be you know as they're dying, they make this powdery stuff. It's not gonna hurt much. The thing that really is gross are the beetles, right? And there's different kinds of beetles that eat different kinds of things, but the ones that I used to get would bore into the fat area um and you know right where the fat meets the kind of uh meat and skin area and you'd see the boreholes and they'd go in there and I had a real tough time eradicating them.
So I think your stock and net is good. Do you think I should put the the paper I could do the paper in the Soconet too just or is that detail? That's that's what that's I've seen people who do that. I think that's the way Finchville sells their hams, uh their paper in Stockinet and if you actually if you look up there's a whole curing uh technique called bag curing that Norman Marriott from uh Virginia um kind of proposes where you put a fixed amount instead of instead of taking your hams and kind of like lay laying them uh you know down flat wise and then turning them over occasionally and then just having the salt kind of distribute over like a big case of hams like the all an alternative method is to add just the amount for that individual ham inside of the paper bat and cure it like individually like that which is yeah that's that's sort of what what we've tried so far with the cure it's sort of a hybrid of the uh Bertoli percentages but with with using the bag right so I'm gonna see how that that turns out. I was just curious too of of of uh I think I have eight of them with two different uh two different pig greens just but I was just what when should I start polling them?
Because I'm thinking of just I want to see how long they can they can go you know with you know they're gonna dry out a little more but maybe you know keep some moisture in them because I'm just curious at the longer end what how the flavor is going to develop. But if you have four of them, when would you recommend pulling them? Huh. You know, in s in sequence, just to taste, as long as they're good. Yeah, I mean, well you can get, you know, uh like an ice pick, right?
And you can kind of judge uh during the curing time based on kind of aroma uh on the ice pick, like kind of where you think um where you think the the flavor is going and I would also highly recommend weighing them uh so you can kind of gauge how much moisture you're losing um over time. Um but I've never m you know I've never made my own from um from s from scratch but you know like all of the anecdotal evidence so if you try to mimic the like the actual kind of uh you know heat regimen you're gonna get in um in kind of like the classic ham production areas you know I wouldn't cut into one earlier than nine months. You know what I mean? And I would I would try to, you know wait a year if you could uh you know I've taken nine month old hams and aged them an additional year and they're hard but they're good. You know I think that the a lot of for you if you want to age them for a long time is going to be that fat coating especially um especially on the face where the meat's exposed because that's where you're gonna lose a lot of moisture.
And so if you if you imagine in your head slicing a country ham the the meat that's close there to the where it was attached to the pig's body where there's no kind of a fat uh covering right it's a lot harder and drier there uh than it is uh in in the rest. And so that's what you're gonna want to and also remember if you're using Bertolis uh salt quantities there are lower uh there are lower salt content so you could probably survive a higher degree of dehydration without having it taste consequently that much more salty so long as it doesn't so long as you have enough in there that uh during the initial curing phase it doesn't spoil but that's where the ice pick's gonna help you. You're gonna jab the ice pick in and you're gonna see what's going on. And of course, you know you don't need to worry about uh I mean if you do get some taint or spoil in the ham when you bone it out you can just cut that part out. I mean I've I can't tell you I've had you know so many hams that had portions of them that were not properly cured and that part was bad but the rest of the ham was still good so you know it's never a never a total loss.
Yeah so I mean I think so the plan is to where they're gonna equalize is sort of this constant temperature but the plan is after that to to uh hang them in a place upstate where there's about a thirty to thirty five degree temperature difference between day and nighttime most of the year. So you know when it's the summer it goes up to eighty five and it will drop into fifty. So I'm guessing you know by everything I've read what you've said too is that that's gonna be fairly beneficial to developing interesting characteristics. Yep. Yep up and down.
So like uh gotta wrap up oh so like uh that's the that's the reason the travel uni uh I think it's the name of them the drying machines they have in Parma are so awesome because they they imitate that kind of um that kind of cycle that day night cycle of um temperature uh humidity yeah so like that's that's what you want. I mean that's definitely what you want. Uh and so uh but you should keep keep us uh keep us posted either on uh on the chat room or to my Twitter at cooking issues and let us know everything going because I love I love hearing the the progress of how these things go. Well, I think I think the first tasting won't be till the fall. So it might be it might be seven or eight months from now.
Yeah, but like if you have if you if you have a problem with insects or something, like let us know. It's you know it's interesting. Yeah, that kind of stuff's interesting to me, especially if you're not gonna be there all the time. You know what I mean? It's uh you don't want to yeah, that's it's sort of it's it's not a hands-on operation at all.
It's sort of a let the thing sit there and come back every few weeks operation. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's know what happens. Cool. All right, thanks for all your help.
All right, cool. So I didn't get to any of this week's questions, but next week we're gonna talk about preserving basil. We have a question from Thailand. We're gonna talk about uh these new I uh this new weird uh freeze or this new instant coffee that supposedly is really good. Uh, but I haven't had it.
So like if any actually if anyone out there for next week can tell me something about uh sudden coffee and whether anyone's had it or tasted it, it like sells out instantly, but so it's hard for me to talk about, but we could talk about it next week on the uh show anyway. Also had a question on Tandoors, which would take a long time for me to get to, so we'll get that uh next time. And also a question on drying things out with sodium sulfate, which I'm not even sure how I should respond to, but we'll talk about it next time on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritage radio network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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