And we're about to start with the equipment. This Heritage Radio Network program is sponsored by Open Table. For more information, visit OpenTable.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. 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. Every Tuesday, you know, like twelve-ish, twelve forty-five, twelve fifty. Depends on whether we have a show coming after kicking us out, or you know, something else to do. You know how it is. Call in your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718497-2128. Joined in the studio as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good. Yeah?
Doing alright? Yeah. Yeah, we got Jackie Molecules. Jack in the in the engineering booth. How are you doing, Jack?
I'm good. What's up with the eye patch, man? Alright. Alright. We'll talk about the eye patch in a minute.
All right. We're doing Pirate Dave right now. Ah. And we're joined, we're joined by, we'll use like political terminology. Engineer Joe.
We got Engineer Joe in the uh in the booth today. How you doing, Joe? Good afternoon. So uh if you should, and by the way, when I say engineer, I don't mean like rocket engineer or automobile engineer, like uh kitchen equipment engineer. So if you guys have any questions about, for instance, why does my X, Y, Z do X, Y, and Z?
You can call and ask Joe, and maybe he can tell you why X, Y, and Z does X, Y, and Z, right? I hope so. Yeah, alright. Uh should uh provide an interesting perspective here on the program. Uh so why am I wearing an eye patch?
This is an excellent question. So it turns out that uh, so I am the uh I don't I do not have a detached retina. That is not what happened. Let's just let's start with that. Let's start with I do not have a detached retina.
However, uh a you know, mid-40s, you know, uh white dude who uh was born like very nearsighted, like I was, you know, I have the late I had the laser surgery, so I can see well could see normally, right? Uh like we are prime candidates, like white male, like mid-age uh nearsighted folk, prime suspects for a retinal detachment. So on Sunday, I start getting like a floater, right? You know, like you know what I'm saying? Like a floater in your eye, like uh, but usually floaters they look kind of like gray.
You know what I mean? So I didn't uh I didn't think much of it. It was bigger than normal. I was like, this sucks. You know what I mean?
And then I did uh, you know, my my daily, I hate to even say these words, workout routine. Right? Yeah, I know it's terrible, it's awful. I don't even want to think about it. Right.
I detest, I detest it. Anyways. Uh so I did that, and then like all of a sudden, my it looked like the beginning of a James Bond like movie situation, like, you know, some golden eye crap, like just like swirls of like black, like galaxies and stars of dust and like blackness and like big inky swirls. You know how like when someone gets shot in the James Bond thing and all the blood pours out of them like ink and shadow effect? Like this is what my vision was like in my eye.
So I'm like, meh, meh. So I go online and they're like, Yeah, yeah, floaters. I'm like, well, this seems worse than a floater. They're like, if it's flashing, if you have flashing lights, this is when you know you're getting a detached retina. Or if like a portion of your vision just literally goes blank, like blank.
Not like looking through a James Bond film, but like blank, detached women. So I'm like, nah, not a big deal. So at dinner, because I cook dinner that night, which by the way, we could talk about dinner. I like uh I have a my new favorite go-to quick meal. We can talk about it in a minute.
Anyways. So like I tell the people at dinner. Yeah, I tell the people at dinner, I'm like, hey, uh, so um I can't really read and it's hard for me to concentrate when I'm slicing, and uh I'm sorry if I seem a little distracted, but like, you know, I have uh a James Bond movie going in my right eye, and they're like, What the what's wrong with you? And so then like I call my mom and mom's like, What's wrong with you? You could be having a detached retina.
I was like, the internet tells me no, Ma. She's like, You idiot, you idiot, idiot, idiot. So I had to go to see a doctor. Luckily, all I did was my eye sack ripped away from the edge, tore open a blood vessel, and sprayed blood all over the inside of my eye, which you can see. But um anyways, so apparently I am at an increased risk for retinal detachment over the next two weeks.
So please, nobody who sees me on the street, please don't punch me in the right side of the head. You know what I mean? Like if you see me on the street, try to avoid your your your primary urge, which will be to punch me in the right side of the head. I know. Like go for a kidney blow.
Something that's not gonna send too much shock to the head. You know what I mean? Like uh, you know, maybe if you hit me in the kidney, maybe I could get some match bleeding, bleeding down low, bleeding up high. Could be good, you know what I mean? So, anyways, so yeah, so uh it's taking me out of uh strenuous activity for the next uh couple of weeks.
But oh, and I have to wear I don't have to wear an eye patch. In fact, my doctor says that I should wear the eye patch as little as possible because uh he wants me to be looking through the eye in case something terrible happens so I can rush to the hospital and they can like glue all the stuff back together, should it start coming apart like a poorly glued model airplane. Uh but the uh but it's impossible for me to read, so there's no way I can do uh there's no way I could do the radio show without the eye patch. I didn't bring the cowboy hat. Yesterday I had the cowboy hat and the eye patch, and I have to say, I have never in my life gotten such looks of respect on the street as I did when I was walking around with like a vest, like you know, like a puffy vest, like my you know, my brown cowboy hat and an eye patch.
People are like, I I don't know, but I don't want to I'm not gonna I don't know, but I'm just not gonna I'm not gonna mess with this one. This one, nah. No. You know what I mean? You know what I mean, Jack?
Yeah. It's a great look. Yeah, you like the eye patch? What's the go to quick meal though? Oh yeah, go to quick meal.
So I do have a caller, we'll we'll stay pa I told him to stay patient. Uh why don't we do the caller? We'll deal with the college problem and then we'll talk about some go to quick meal. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey uh guys, this is Coleman from uh from Brooklyn.
How's it going? Doing all right, how you doing? Not bad, thanks. Um uh two questions. First of all, I'm going to Vancouver this coming weekend.
I want to see if you have any uh restaurant recommendations up there. You know what? You know what that's for? That's for the chat room. I haven't been to Vancouver in I think like four years, and I went with uh uh, you know the food writer out there, Fong.
It was good, but I can't remember. I went to like whatever the top-rated sushi restaurant was in Vancouver and it was quite good, but I don't remember the name of it. You know what I mean? And so much has happened in Vancouver over the past uh over the past couple of years. I would hesitate even to have you been there recently?
Did you go there, Styles when you went to Seattle in Portland? No. No? Joe, you've been to Vancouver recently? In the mid-90s.
That's even earlier. I was there too in the mid-90s. It was crazy time. That's when all of Hong Kong was buying up Vancouver when that yeah. Yeah, interesting time.
Yeah. Uh but no uh Jack, you're gonna put that out to the uh chat room? Yeah, I will. All right, put uh so I'm sorry that I don't have anything specific, but we'll get the chat room working on it and you can uh you know get the cooking issues crew weighing in on that. Do you have any other questions that maybe I know?
Uh and I, you know, I I'm I don't approve of that, but it's a friend. Uh and I want to see if you had any good vegetarian cookbooks that you actually liked and thought would be worth uh getting as a present. Yeah, sure. You need to get a Michael Natkin's Herbivaracious. Boom.
Which one again? Michael Natkin's Herbivaracious. Okay. Herbivoracious. Uh Michael Natkin um does work with uh Chef Steps.
And uh even Nastasia, hater of vegans everywhere. Good book. Thinks it's a good book, right? You just heard Nastassi say it again. Good book.
See, you heard Nastasia Lopez actually praising something on air, if you can believe that. Nastasia Lopez I'm proud to have caused that. Yeah, yeah. Nastasia Lopez has actually cooked recipes out of this book. Right?
That's true. That like, yeah, that's crazy endorsement. Now, if I might go forward, uh, and Nastasia is going to disagree with me here, uh, I would go purchase um any one of the number of excellent Indian vegetarian uh cookbooks out there. The one that I happen to own is extremely old, and so it doesn't uh I mean I don't even know whether it's uh current, it's not really current anymore, but I have the old Yamuna Devi one. But you know, anyone who's become vegetarian better get themselves very, very acquainted with Indian food lickies.
My girlfriend's vegetarian, so I cook a lot of Indian at home. Yeah. And let me say this. Uh I wouldn't worry so much about uh well, you know, you're not the vegetarian, you don't care. But like the point is is that is that like a lot of times I think when someone I mean the great thing about Indian uh cooking, vegetarian cooking, is that they have so many centuries of practice at doing this properly in a very kind of uh integrated and a holistic way.
So it's not just trying to glue the vegetarian precepts onto like some other form of eating. So it's really a good place to start. But uh I think I find that a lot of people uh when they start out get rather daunted because of the spice mixtures and uh you know all all of the all of these other things. And uh I think that I know I don't know how kind of creative your friend is, but um a lot of the techniques that are used uh in Indian cooking or the basic flavor combinations, even without the huge mix of spices and the masalas and whatnot are extremely useful. So, you know, uh like you know, if you're making like a a s like you know, mint coconut chutney can be really, really complicated, or it can literally be I'm gonna throw a coconut with some mint and uh and coriander and uh ginger and some spice uh you know, and a couple nuts in a blender and go with some water and oil and bang.
You know what I mean? Like super fresh. So I I think like some willingness to not necessarily adhere to the letter of what's going on in those cookbooks is very helpful. Um because you're not shooting for authentic, you're shooting for delicious. And right, and things can be authentic and delicious, or they can be uh your own creation and delicious, you know?
You got that right. So that's those are my suggestions. Cool. All right, hey, thanks so much. Hey, no problem.
Hey Jack, did we get anyone uh weighing in in Vancouver yet? No, but I just texted you in Stas. We have a first time chatter here. Uh Jay Heaton just made a enemies of quality t-shirt design. Wow.
You gotta look at it. I just texted it to you in Stas. Do you see it? Uh I'm looking through my one my one as uh as Bob Dylan would say, my one dying eye. Oh my god.
For for those of you that listen to The Hurricane. Do people still talk about that? About the hurricane? About Bob Dylan. No, about the song the hurricane.
Wow, tomatoes in the fridge. We've got to send this to Daniel Gritzer and see what Dan. Daniel Gritzer famously said that I was the enemy of truth by saying that putting uh uh tomatoes in the fridge. He can go back, we can look we can uh reference whatever uh episode that was where Daniel is actually on. Yep.
But he said, you know, I famously not famously for me, uh r often say rather, that uh putting tomatoes in the fridge makes you the enemy of quality because as we all know, uh tomatoes turn mealy when they're stored in the in the fridge for a long time. It's it's m more severe of a problem in tomatoes that have large um amounts of flesh, right? When I say flesh, I mean the actual like granular part of the flesh as opposed to just seeds and water like a cherry tomato has. Uh did I ever tell you guys how bitter cherry tomato skins are? We'll we'll get into that in a minute.
Anyway, so I've said it was like a super enemy of quality situation um because it's true. Uh and so I tend to leave my tomatoes on the counter, and this is especially true when I shop for very high-end tomatoes in uh August at the farmer's market. And Daniel said to me, Look it. When you take especially not such a great tomato or a tomato that's ripe and you leave it on the counter, it loses uh it loses a lot of its qualities and becomes not good compared to one that's stored in a fridge for a day or two and then removed and allowed to come up to temperature. And he had a lot of things.
I think that's uh maybe correct, except for when I buy exp when I buy garbage tomatoes, I don't really care because they're garbage. You know what I mean? Um when I buy like a really good tomato, uh I always buy them, I buy ones I'm gonna eat today and they're ready. I buy ones I'm gonna eat tomorrow and they have like a day left, and I turn them upside down, in other words, the stem side down, because the stem side is the firmest side of the tomatoes. Tomatoes ripen from the part that's furthest away from the plant towards the stem.
So the stem is the stem end is the most is the strongest part of the tomato, so it's not gonna break when you store it that way. It usually has a natural resting point and you won't burst the skin, and I let them sit out uh you know on a cool counter, or it if I'm in a snooty mood, my wine storage container. That styles made fun of me because just because I was having to give in as a gift to like a like a little one of those little wine holding refrigerators, now Anastasia thinks that I walk around with a monocle. I don't. I walk around with an eye patch, duh.
Boom. And uh boom styles. So there goes you and your uh hopes of seeing me as the planter's peanut man. Um one of those wines cool. That's like such a classic example of a gift somebody would give.
Right? Yeah. Right? And then you're like, I guess I'll use it. Yeah, but you know what it's really good for, Jack?
Tomatoes. Clearly. You know what else? Wine. You know what else?
Chocolate. Oh, yeah. Chocolate. Good for chocolate. Yeah.
Uh and so you know what it's holding now? Box after box of box wine. Because everyone knows that's how I rock it now, the box wines. And the box have you have you been? Anyway.
So Daniel is basically saying that uh if I say that you're an enemy of quality for putting a uh tomato in the fridge, I'm being too simplistic and not taking into account the way that the majority of people uh consume tomatoes here in the good old US of A. And you know what? He's probably right. So what's your go-to quick meal? Go to quick meal.
Uh it's so I forget I forget how the situation started. I think it was because Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink said something about uh Trinidad food, and I somehow went into some rabbit hole on Trinidad or something, and I saw this dish for um yam. Now you know yams aren't yams. You know Americ in America, when we say yam, we really mean sweet potato. Did you know that, Jack?
I suspect it as much. Yeah. So the sweet potato is not a yam. It is an entirely different species. Like what we call yam, I forget the name of the actual uh thing, but it's like it's like uh something it's like uh batata ipanemo, some.
I ran into this problem when a recipe called for sweet potatoes and yams, and I was like, wait, what? Yeah, but most uh like 99.9% of Americans when they say yam, what they mean is a different color of sweet potato, right? So they're still talking about two different varieties of the same exact plant, neither of which is a yam, right? Yam is an entirely different tuber that is neither a potato nor a sweet potato. And it's there's a variety of them, yams.
Anyway, the particular one I was using is called Name. Anyway, so it was a mixture of are you familiar with the uh French uh uh dish brandade? Have I talked about this dish on the so you know brandade? You know brandad, anyone? Brandad, anyone, brandad?
So it's like mashed potatoes and like shredded salt uh cod? Yes. And like with like butter, like butter and cream finished with typically with walnut oil, uh, you know, I think it's basca or some crap, you know, it's right on the border, one of those things is right on the border. So anyway, so I saw this like smashed yam and salt fish recipe with like peppers and onions. I was like, bang.
So I don't make I don't do it traditional, I do like like a huge bunch of uh sauteed tomatoes, a huge bunch of sauteed red and green, because sorry I can't help myself, I can't just have green peppers, it's you know, whatever. Uh and the all you it's super simple. You just uh do that. Oh, and the the trick with this, you know how any any of you guys do Catholic uh any of you guys do Catholic uh Christmas Eve? No.
What the hell? Anyone? Catholic Christmas Eve? I'm gonna have. You have.
Good. So what do you so what do you eat on a c on a classic uh Italian Cathic uh Catholic uh Christmas Eve? Fish. Right. So you're eating fish.
So one of the great fishes you eat, of course, is baccala, right? So baccala is the is the salt cod. It's reconstituted. Now, when you're eating Italian Christmas Eve dinner, the problem with the baccala in this situation is you have to buy the nice big pieces and you have to reconstitute them over over a couple of days to get the right texture and the right taste. Uh and ex good uh dried cod is quite expensive.
However, for this recipe, or if you're making uh cod fritters, do you like baccalagitos? You like those stuff? Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're delicious. You like those, Joe, Jack, you ever have these?
Yeah, they're delicious, right? The advantage of these things is you can use the crappier thin pieces of cod that aren't fit for serving on Christmas Eve, but still have a lot of that flavor. So all you do is you throw uh you throw all the cod into into a big pot of water like you would for pasta with no salt, duh. You take it from cold, you bring it up just below to a simmer, you let it ride for a couple minutes, dump it, do it once more, and the cod's ready to use within like 10 minutes. You pull it out, you hack it up with a knife, you throw it into the saute after you're done, you uh just you know, peel your yam, which gets really, really slippery and gross.
Uh chop it, boil it, smash it up. I add a boatload of butter and oil to it, and I serve it with uh limes and avocados, tomatoes, and that's it. Lettuce, boom, done, boom, done. Fast, delicious. You can put any any sort of topping you could put on.
It's not traditional, maybe Trinidad, but like you must have avocados and you must have lime. If you don't have those two things, you don't deserve to have uh, you know, the meal. Anyway, that's my go-to now, because I can I can get it on the table in under an hour, and you know, it's unusual for people that haven't had it yet. So and it's cheap, super cheap. Anyway.
Nice. Can we take a really quick break so we can get that out of the way? Sure. Yep, let's do it. Come right back with cooking issues.
Open Table is a proud sponsor of Heritage Radio Network. Open Table is home to the world's largest dining network, seating over 17 million diners every month. Their technology solutions help restaurants run and grow their businesses. That means providing memorable hospitality to every guest, streamlining front of house operations, and optimizing seating to seat more diners and drive more business. Chefs, restaurateurs, and other industry professionals can find more tips and best practices for running a successful restaurant on their blog.
Open for business at openforbusiness.opentable dot com. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Alright. So uh on from that. Did you think I sounded like a good uh dish there, Jack?
Yeah, I'm into it. Joe? Sounded great. Yeah, very fast, very cheap. Uh okay.
I'm a cheap man. Did you know that? What? I'm super cheap. I'm like I like being generous with food quantities, but if I can I have no f I feel no compunction, except when buying steak and cheese, to buy like super expensive stuff.
You know what I'm saying? Wait, wait, just steak and cheese. Well, I'm just thinking two things off the top of my head. I don't buy cheap steak, I don't buy cheap cheese. I mean, I don't buy expensive cheese explicitly, but most of the cheeses that I like end up costing a good deal of money.
You know what I mean? So and what I tend to do is I try to find the highest quality supplier of the cheese at a reasonable price, which means I end up eating a lot of Italian cheese here in New York because I go to DiPalos, because DiPalos is like the greatest Italian cheese shop. By the way, this was super depressing. I was in Milan last week, which is why we didn't do the show. And did I tell you this, Stuas?
Like what I found depressing was I went to like some of the high-end markets in uh in you know, in Milan, and there was nothing that I saw that I was like, I need to bring this home because I can't get this here in New York. And I was really depressed by that. Like the you know, there was stuff I couldn't bring home because it's illegal, like meats and stuff like this, but you know, most of the cheeses, and I tried them, like the quality difference wasn't that great. It wasn't like I was getting a lot of loss bringing it over, and maybe it's because Milan, you know, Milan isn't the heart of the super micro artigenale, blah blah blah blah blah, like you know, farmer with his cap and all this other stuff. Had some delicious um liquors over there, but yeah, isn't that depressing that I couldn't find anything that I was like, oh yeah.
And it's not like I went to like I did also go to supermarkets while I was there because I always, when I travel, go to supermarkets to see what people's supermarkets are like. And I recommend anyone do this. Like take a good 20 minutes out. Everyone passes a supermarket when they're in a foreign country. Go into the supermarket and see how they see how people shop.
Do you like doing that or do you not like it? Yeah, yeah. And uh weird stuff there anyway. But the point is, I was just super depressed by that because almost always I can find some crap that you know I'm like, oh man, that's awesome. I don't know.
Depressing. Uh, but I did have a lot of good risotto since you know, Milan, good risotto. And I did have the big Milanese uh breaded cutlet, you know what I'm talking about? You know they call it the elephant because they leave the bone on it. So do you like cutlets?
Do you like you like you like those things, Joe? Yes, I do. They're delicious. I had an interesting risotto at a restaurant called Daniel, no relation to our Daniel here. He's an Italian Daniel.
Uh get this licorice and lemon. What do you think? I don't know. I mean, do are would you be willing to try it? Licorice and lemon.
Licorice and lemon. Rizzotto? Rizzotto. Delicious. Really delicious.
And Nastasia, you would have liked it perfectly cooked. The best cooked. So I had a couple of uh of you know, well-reviewed restaurants in Milan I went to that had the risotto that was like a little bit starched out and gloopy on the outside. You hate that, right? And with uh with the core that's cooked all the way through, all the way through.
No. You hate hate, right? Hate, hate, and where the gr the grains come up in big c clumps of stuff, hate, right? This thing, like all the grains were still themselves, but they had a nice, like, you know, awesome like texture on the outside, tiny core on the inside, still done perfectly cooked. Best.
Anyway. Uh also. I went to this crazy restaurant whose name escapes me. Where check this out, Stas. I think it's called like Boca and David uh uh Boca and Davino or something like this.
You go in, did I tell you about this one? You go in and they just Joe and Jack, you'll like this. They you order nothing, which already I like. I hate making choices. I hate choices.
Choices are the worst. Like every day your life, you have to make choices all the time. Where am I gonna go? What am I gonna do? Who am I gonna hang out with?
What bearing am I gonna use in the centrifuge? Blah blah blah. You know what I mean? Like choices all freaking day. And then all of a sudden, you go to a place and they're like, you know what?
Crap on you. And here's what they do they just bring like plate after plate after plate of salumi, and they're just chopping it off, like all different, like, you know, like these weird ones from like Nortia that are sliced thick, so you know, hams, all good stuff. But they just open a bottle of wine, bring it to you open, because I think they cheat. I think they reuse the bottle and refill it. But that's that's not important.
It's very host friendly. They bring the bottle of wine, they pour you the two glasses, because there's only two of us eating, and then they just put the bottle of wine on the table with the first course. No choice, you don't get to choose a bottle of wine, because that's not your job. That's the Somoye's job. That's his freaking job.
Right? Of course. And it's his restaurant. There's a picture of him with his kid in the backpack in the mountains, you know, because it's very close to the Alps. Anywho.
So I'm like, oh, this is kind of nice, it's kind of refreshing, and you can pour yourself more. Then they come with the next plate of salumi, chaka chaka, chaka, chaka chaka, and the next open bottle of wine, and they pour in two new glasses, and they put that freaking bottle on the table, and they don't take away the other bottle. Then comes then comes the freaking pasta and the pastas in uh, you know, they serve it like like old school, like what I assume is an old school like 70s, like kind of like this is the kind of cheese, uh not cheese literally, but you know, cheesy thing that I kinda kitschy thing that I love. They had the half parmesan bowl that they tossed, like the uh Talian, and they and they serve it out of that with another freaking bottle of wine. Then comes the cheese course with another freaking bottle of wine.
Then comes the uh dessert, they brought a dessert with like uh some sort of local like Vinsanto style thing that wasn't Vinci, it was from near Milan. Then the grappa in an open freaking bottle. So our table with no choice, a table is just like littered with glasses, and obviously I didn't ate all the salumies, there wasn't any of that, but it was a good experience. And you know what? Some idiot walks in.
I'm talking, I don't speak Italian, so the other guy's saying, some idiot walks in and says, uh says, everything on TripAdvisor, it's rated on TripAdvisor. Every single thing is like, you do not choose, you do not choose, there is no choice, and by the way, there's no choice. Some guy comes in and he's like, um, there's no uh choices here. I kind of thought, you know, we could choose what we wanted. And the guy was like, Yeah, hey, leave.
You know, you know, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like, uh, people. What makes people think they'll make the right choice? There's a no reason why anyone should make the right choice. And if you have, like, if you are picky, you should not go to a restaurant whose whole shtick is you have no choice.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, eh, whatever. Wish there were more of those here. I love the no choice.
Yeah, me too. Well, that's like, you know, even places here that are no choice, it really is like marginal choice. You can walk into like a place that, you know, has like uh like a prefix only, like, you know, three course, and you can say, Oh, oh yes, but this and but that. But this guy doesn't even tell you. There's no menu.
There's no there's no here's what you might have kind of situation. Just shows up. There's no opportunity to be like, I don't like that. Anyway. And we went to the place in Greece that was like that, Stas?
No choice. As uh Jeffrey Star Steingarden's uh wife, Karen says, no choice, no problem. By the way, I'm gonna talk about this on the air while we're here. Nastasia Lopez is the queen of uh of not putting up with crap that she hates. Okay.
It is a well-known fact here at Herbert's Pizzeria, and I love Robertas. You know that, Jack, right? Yes. Right. It's a well-known fact that uh they have greens in this restaurant.
How do I know this? Because they always have specials with greens, right? For the past year, Nastasi and I, every single time we sit down, every Tuesday, we're like, can we get greens on our pizza? And Stas, what's the answer? No.
Yeah, no greens on the pizza. So they're like, we're like, how about you just take greens and throw them on the pizza? Like, and and what do they say? No. Right.
So Nastasia for the past couple of weeks has turned Roberta's pizzeria into a BYOG restaurant. She literally goes to the store on the way to the radio program. She has to leave five minutes earlier, picks up the uh what's your favorite green on a pizza stas? Arugula. Oh, yeah.
That's the right answer. Oh yeah, baby arugula. Oh yeah. With some oil, brings it, and then we put it on our own pizza. But how crazy is that?
So good. And they they never say anything about it. They're never giving us crap about it. Yeah, but then what if like what if another table is like, I want one of those? They should start stalking the freaking greens for the pizza.
You know what? You know what? I should have uh I should have the head of the pizza kitchen come in. We should talk about this on there. Here's the thing.
They could say, hey, I'm gonna charge you six bucks. And I'd be like, okay. Anyway, whatever. So it's a BYOG restaurant. It's the only outside food we can bring into Robert is his greens for our pizza.
Whatever. Okay, some questions. Um two quick questions for the year of starch uh research. Uh I've been making the flower tortilla recipe in the new Stu Pac Taco cookbook written uh with Alex Dupac and Jordana Rothman. Do you have a copy of that?
No. Me neither. Yeah. Shows what kind of friends we are. We don't even rate a copy of the book.
Thanks. Of course, I'm sure we would have gotten a copy had we gone to the book launch party, but we were doing we were doing other stuff. James Beard Award nominee. Really? For the book?
Yeah. Well, I hope they win. Yeah, me too. I mean, not that I've read it yet, but I mean I like it. Yeah, he's really good on panels.
That guy tells it like it is. Yeah, he's uh he he's also really, really good at demos. You ever seen him do a cooking demo? I haven't. Really good.
Like like a hardcore, like everything, like he's the anti me when it comes to demos. Like literally the polar opposite. Like it in this he does a lot of stuff, so in that way it's like similar, but like every single thing he does is perfectly tightened down and like neat and clean and comes off like a machine, right? Whereas you It's like imagine a machine that like where parts are flying off of it at all points, and like just like oil and grease and gas are spraying everywhere. That's more like how I operate, right, Stas?
Yeah. Yeah. Stas is like, I know that too well. Anyway. Um Lately I've been making flour tortillas uh from the Stu Pack Taco Cookbook, and I've noticed some variation across other recipes I've seen.
Some say to use cold water, others say to use very hot water. Some say to knead the dough well and rest it a while to develop gluten, although it's probably mean they mean relax. But anyway, well, right, resting a short while is gonna relax it, resting a long time will let the gluten hydrate and develop, whatever. Well, others recommend a very short knead and a short rest to keep the dough from getting tough. What's actually going on here?
I know nothing will be as good as fresh masa tacos. Now listen, I too, and apparently so uh Alex, because I uh I read it, you know, uh we originally were saying that the only good tortilla is a corn tortilla. I have recanted this because the issue isn't that flour tortillas can't be delicious. They they they can be, obviously, they are. That and even apparently in Mexico and a lot of places, that uh you almost needed to make a statement, and so you needed to go all in for corn tortillas, right?
And let's be honest, corn tortillas are a lot harder to freaking make than a flour tortilla if you're gonna start with raw corn. It's a lot harder. You know what I mean? Oh, really a lot harder. Uh so therein, the fact that there's uh, you know, a lot more of an art uh and a lot more going into making a corn tortilla, and also such a huge quality difference between the craft that you buy and the um and you know what you know what you can make.
I think that is what led people like me, people like Alex, many people to say that the flour tortilla is garbage and that like you should only focus on the corn tortilla. Not true. Flour tortilla, delicious, right? Uh so you know, I wouldn't s I I'm gonna I I'm gonna dial back a lot that I've said and I've never worked I've never frankly made a lot of flour tortillas. I don't I'm not an expert in them because I have spent all my time on corn, but I'm here to tell you that I'm I am now a believer that the flour tortilla is just as honorable to make as a corn tortilla, just not as difficult.
Now, so what's going on in a flour tortilla? Flour tortilla is a mixture of uh t basically lard, flour, water, salt, right? And most of the recipes, and I took a glance not in his book because of course we don't have a copy because of course we didn't go to the party like I already told you. Uh and like, you know, Stas and I aren't in the business of like shelling out actually you know, that's not true. We buy we buy books.
We should just buy their freaking book and support Alex and Jordana, whatever. Uh you know, you put the lard, which is you know has a uh um uh is mm, what's the word I'm looking for? Has a lower melt point or it's an oilier, has a more less solid than butter, right, into the flour, and then stew pack adds uh hot, hot or very warm water to it. Not hot enough to affect the actual flour. My guess is is that unlike a biscuit where you're looking to keep your uh lard particles or your butter particles or your shortening particles separate so that you create flake layers in between um uh the pieces of flour.
So if you're making like because uh a biscuit dough, depending on the style that you make, but if you're doing a flaky style biscuit dough as opposed to the ones that are done with scoops uh you know like the if you're doing like an old school flaky thing you really want the uh butter things to stay separate so you you put it into the flour you work it into your hands until it resembles like a cornmeal with some larger pieces of butter you do the minimum amount of um of work on the on the dough because you don't want it to get tough in any way right and then you bake them the butter then melts the water that's in the butter uh expands you get pockets you get flaky things in between the thing everybody's happy everyone likes your biscuits go by the way Staz I can't talk to her about it because she doesn't like biscuits yeah I need that like sign again because I can't believe there's someone on next to me who doesn't like biscuits. Joe, you like biscuits, right? Of course. Are you a fluffy or a flaky? Flaky.
Flaky Jack, fluffy or flaky? Sorry about that. I'm flaky. Flaky, really I used to be exclusively flaky and I that's how I make them. I have in the past couple of years come to respect the fluffy biscuit.
Yeah? Yeah. I think they're different. They're different in the way that like a northern cornbread and a southern cornbread are different. Right.
Anyway. So let's finish let me finish the tortilla. Okay. So uh anyhow um I think what the hot water is for there is to literally like help melt the uh lard out because here what the lard is doing isn't forming little pockets to leaven to make something flaky because that's not what it's all about. And there's going to be enough water on the inside and it's gonna be thin enough that you're gonna get puffing just from the hot comal where you're cooking the tortilla.
Here, what the hot water is doing is causing the lard to run out and mix with the flour particles and prevent this is my guess, I don't know, prevent the gluten from forming. And so uh the hot water is actually in this case going to prevent uh excess gluten development by causing the lard to be more evenly distributed in the uh dough. This is a 100% guess and not based in any sort of actual knowledge. This is just me thinking off the top of my head. And with that, caller, you're on the air.
Hey Dave, uh it's Alex from Brooklyn. First, I wanted to give you a quick update. I had called in about doing an outdoor deep fryer, and you would recommend a walk instead. Uh-huh. And I ended up buying a propane wok burner, and it is awesome.
Sweet. So it's so perfect. So thank you for your help. And now my quandary is I do an annual pig roast in Prospect Park. Right.
And I was wondering about doing a whole 75-pound pig low temp. Is that a good strategy? Or do you have something else you recommend? Let me think here. So I'm trying to look in my head.
I can picture a 200-pound pig and I can picture a 20-pound pig. A 75-pound pig is what, like three feet long? Yeah, give or take. It fits in one of those big uh like hunting coolers pretty nicely with a lot of ice. Got it.
Oh, so you're gonna do the cooler method, huh? Here's the issue with low-temping uh a whole pig. Uh the loin is always gonna be stringy. I mean, it's always gonna have that like cook too long taste. You know what I mean?
So you can you can do it. It's it won't be bad, but it's gonna be best on um on the legs, obviously, are gonna come out uh better. The majority of the belly will be good, uh, except for like there's one or two muscles that don't have a lot of kind of uh fat or connective tissue in there, and that they're gonna end up being dry. You know what might be an interesting technique that I've never tried. What if you and I was talking off the top of my head here?
What if you were to uh in place in the pig rub curing salt into the loin section so that you almost got some cure in the loin section, and then see I always wanted to do is like almost like take them take the major muscles, like almost disassemble the pig, cook it all perfectly, reassemble it, and then do the roast off to get the skin kind of quick c crackly and awesome, but I've never done it. You know what I my real dream is is to do the uh Colombian style where you take the whole skin off, like the lechona, where you take the whole skin off, turn it into a cape, then cook all the different pieces kind of separately, reassemble with meat glue, and then roast and crisp off the whole thing, and then uh meanwhile re-therming the stuff on the inside. Like that would be the ultimate. That's kind of hard, that's kind of hardcore. It's a dream.
That's very hardcore. It's a dream, and someday I will do it. Uh but it look, it's gonna work. It's just like there are always muscles in a pig that I don't think want to be cooked that long. That's all.
You know what I mean? It's the same reason why I have my issues with a whole pig barbecue. That I think that there are some cuts that are uh you know better uh done um other ways. It'll still be good. It's gonna be good.
I just it's hard to get a whole animal cooked right all at the same time. But you know what? You what I would do is test it a little bit. I would get like the relevant pieces in small bags before you do the cook. And then and that's what I did when I was working on the turkey recipe when I was working on the uh on the bionic turkey.
I don't know if you have, you know, where I ripped all the bones out of the turkey and then reassemble the skeleton and did all that stuff. The way that we did the tests on that was uh we first thing we did is I went and bought uh turkey breasts and uh turkey legs and and just ran a bunch of side by sides and said, okay, this level of salt uh cooked for this many hours, how does it taste? And then at this temperature, and then choosing uh things that were within a degree or two of each other so I could get them to come together at the same time. And that's the way I developed the recipe. So if I was gonna do a whole pig, I would do the same thing.
I would choose some of the larger muscles. I would get like a little piece of the belly, a little piece of the, well, you're not gonna have that much of it, a little piece of the loin, a little piece of the of like parts of the leg, and I would just run some time temps to see kind of where it was harmonious, and then see whether I could do something like add more or less salt to the uh to the parts that like might get stringy or maybe cure them so that they stay um kind of better over a long cook period. Because uh if they're cured, they'll hold up to that long uh ride better than not. Uh so I mean that's what I would do, and then figure out how much of a crazy person you want to be in terms of disassembling and reassembling this pig before you do the final roast. Gotcha, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. Oh, and uh an easy way um you're gonna do how are you gonna roast it? You're gonna get like a cajina afterwards to do the finish? But those are too slow. Are you gonna do like a big spit?
What are you gonna do to do the finish the finish on it? So I've done the kajachina the last three, four years, and I've just been really disappointed in the results, and I'm ready to up my game. So that's why I was thinking low temp. Yeah, um, but I I I may have to just go spit for the whole thing. Remember, if you do low temp, it gives you the ability to go higher temp on the spit so that you can, or you could do here's another thing.
You could do low temp for insurance, and if you get if you circulate, if you have something whose flavor is amazing, right? Then you can circulate it in that almost as though you're kind of poaching it. I'd run some tests first, and then pull it out, dry it out, and then just spit it at a higher temperature because it's already been cooked, and then you can focus just on the skin. That might be a good way around it. The other way is to low temp it, pull it out when it's hot, let the skin get really, really, really, really dry off of the low temp, really dry, and then just do the ladle fry over the whole thing.
And so for that, you know, you need a big super dangerous, but you know, you hold it above the oil, and then you just have ladles and hot fat, you just go, go, go, go, go. This is a huge terrible ignition. Uh you're putting yourself in danger of igniting it. However, it is delicious to do things this way. And what about bags for low-temping a big pig?
So they make uh vacuum bags uh that are meant for putting comforters in, and they're not technically food grade, but uh I'm not gonna say to use them. I've used them. You know what I mean? You have to, you know, be a little bit a little bit careful. But that's why if you had a liquid, you could just use oil.
But that's a lot, it's a lot of freaking oil. And oil takes longer to cook. So you have to be if you can't do a test for time where that you where your your time test is in water, and then assume that your time to cook is going to be the same when you're using oil, it's not. And you are gonna need multiple circulators and blah blah blah blah blah. But uh, you know, it's a lot of freaking oil.
Or, like I say, you could use uh one of these uh bags. But the issue with a pig is that the internal cavity of the pig is gonna be um is going to be hollow and filled with air, and it's really gonna ruin your um your cook times. So like the best way to do it is to literally uh like you can almost but then if it's flat, it'll be hard to reassemble it. That's why like when I do the turkey, I literally pipe hot fat inside the animal so that we're cooking in both directions at once. And you gotta remember that a 75-pound pig isn't that thick on the inside, and so uh you know, you can cook it a lot faster if you're piping the hot liquid into the cavity of the animal using two circulators, which is what I typically do when I'm working on larger, larger creatures.
And wouldn't ANOVA work, or do I am I gonna need to get one of the polyscience ones? Um I forget which one of the circulators I have has a problem pumping fat because of the viscosity, it auto-shuts down, but I don't remember which one it it it is. Um the new poly science ones, I don't think Philip wants you to put oil through them. This is again, like everything is about the testing. So like you don't want to show up with a pig in a circulator and then all of a sudden realize your technique's not gonna work, but it's like super easy to just throw a circulator into like you know a small container of oil, fire it up, not gonna ruin the circulator, right?
At least I have not yet ruined a circulator. Let's let's rephrase that. Uh and uh, you know, just see whether it runs. And one of them, and I forget which one it is, cuts out when you try to circulate oil with it. Doesn't kill it, put it back in water and it comes back to life.
But uh, yeah. Gotcha. Well, this is very helpful. I'll certainly keep you updated. Yeah, let us know how it works out.
All right, thanks, Dave. Alright, cool. Uh okay. So uh we've got a second question on uh on starch. Secondly, I've read uh Harold McGee and Kenji's takes on how hot and how much water is sufficient to cook pasta.
But is there a theoretical perfect temperature and potentially time for fresh uh or dry pasta? If it exists, couldn't we achieve that in a circulator? Uh many thanks, uh Brooke. Um I don't uh uh look I don't think that there's uh like m gonna be an advantage to circulating uh pasta, right? Here's why.
In order for the pasta to cook properly, the water's gonna have to be uh fairly close to boiling, right? In order to swell the starch and to get it to all work. So you're talking about a couple of degrees difference, but so it's not like making dashi with combo or something like this where you know you're talking about, oh, I'm gonna cook it at like 60, 70 degrees Celsius. You're talking like you're gonna be above 80 in change anyway. So I don't think the difference between 80 in change and a hundred is really going to be um like that much of a life changer in terms of the texture of of the pasta, so I don't think you're gonna really win.
I think the only time that it's really critical to get the water levels 100% right is if you're gonna can pasta and make soup. And we had a question on that, someone asked, but I've never really never really gotten to it. That said, uh, you know, I would go back and read Harold's uh article from a million years ago in the New York Times on uh pasta and and different um water levels. I just don't freaking worry about it. Do you worry about it much, Daz?
No. I just don't worry about it. When you use larger quantities of water, I have look, this is terrible, but like uh remember uh uh I use a lot of water, I have incredibly powerful gas burners, and I don't pay for gas. Uh right, my co-op pays for gas. And so this is a terrible statement to make, but I use excess gas.
I'm not, I'm not uh I don't conserve probably as much as I should the natural gas that I have. Um I tend to use a lot of water, and the reason I tend to use a lot of water is I don't measure the salt levels that go into the water, and larger amount of water in the pot is much more stable with a finished salt level in the given amount of pasta than um than a smaller amount of water because it's it just is, you know, because you have more water to work with. It's not for any temperature reasons, and it's not for rolling boil, and it's not for uh it's not for the pasta sticking together, it's because I want the salt levels to come out relatively similar. Um I know plenty of people like uh um Alex Nackey at Ideas in Food. They pie they they did the thing where they cold soaked pasta for a long time before they cooked it, right?
Uh their theory being it takes less time to cook, takes less energy to cook if you soak it beforehand. I don't know if that's true or not, but they they say that uh and they say that it comes out more uh even because it takes less time because water has intruded into the pasta, it takes less time for the pasta to cook through and hence it uh less degradation to the outside of the pasta before the inside is done. Is it true? Is it not? Don't know.
Uh I have other uh I had an Italian guy tell me that I should uh throw it in at the boil, bring it up to the boil, close it uh after you stir it to have it not stick, and turn the water off. Why? He didn't want the pasta to roll around and get beaten up on certain pastas, because he's saying that that's what causes a starch on the outside to get beaten up in the outside of the pasta to get mangled. Is it true? I don't know.
What I'm saying is is that I think there are about 8,000 different ways to get pasta cooked uh nicely, and I think it's more about pulling it at the right time than um anything else. What do you think, Stas? Yeah. That's that's about it here, Dave. Oh man, all right.
We have some more questions. We'll get to them next time on the 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. 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 heritageradio network.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.