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291. Salumist Elias Cairo of Olympia Provisions

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This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the emergent circulator for Sous V by Chef Steps. Order now at Chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. We're a member supported food radio network, broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Join our hosts as they lead you through the world of craft brewing, behind the scenes of the restaurant industry, inside the battle over school food, and beyond.

[1:00]

Find us at heritageradio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 for Burns Petrie at Bushwick, Brooklyn. Uh joined uh as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stu?

[1:25]

I'm using Nastasia's normal microphone, and it's even more kind of like worse than yours, right? It's even worse than mine. I'm surprised. I always thought I was giving you the good one, but no, it's all like bent and crooked. We got Dave in the booth.

[1:35]

How are you doing, Dave? I'm good. You're not bent and crooked in here. Wow. Why does Lord It Over us, Dave?

[1:42]

I think I just did. All right. Uh, but listen, you're gonna want to get your uh telephones or whatever you use, Skypages or whatever you do, to call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128, because today in the studio, we have two special guests. We have Elias Cairo from Olympia uh Olymp Olympic Olympia Provisions.

[2:02]

I always want to say Olympic, and then you'll shoot me in the face. I'll support you. All right. Uh in Portland. Uh we met how long ago?

[2:09]

Like about in the spring. Six months ago? Yeah, yeah, at the uh Oregon Truffle Fest. And I had the great good fortune of uh going to a special dinner uh at uh at OP and uh fantastic. So I'll just say for those of you that are going to Portland, legit.

[2:23]

I'm gonna give it the cooking issues legit stamp. Awesome. Uh and we also have in the uh in the studio uh Samantha, what's your last name, Samantha? Chulik. That is correct.

[2:36]

Wow, so what's so like we're just gonna get this out of the way now. So did you start out wanting to be a food PR person, or are you just a general by the way, do you find the term flack offensive or not? No, we're good. All right. So did you start out as kind of a general purpose flack?

[2:49]

So you could either be selling thumbtacks or food or cars, or are you one of these people that actually enjoys food? I strictly food and beverage. All right, so you're as we s as we like to say, one of the good ones. Yeah. Because I you know, like uh in in a lot of businesses, um Sarah, you know, Elias, you know what I'm talking about.

[3:07]

It's like you get these people in there, they don't really care what the hell they're selling. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like Dave over here, he doesn't care what he's recording. Noise.

[3:16]

Wow, is that really what you think of me? I'm just busting you because of the microphone crack, Dave. Come on. You know it's all love in here. It's all do you feel better now?

[3:23]

No, I feel slightly dirty. Um we got a bunch of uh cool stuff. Uh call in calling your questions, like I say. So you know, for those of you that don't know uh Elias, he's like uh uh a hunter, a cure master, uh like uh you own these two restaurants, right? Uh two real restaurants and then three fast casual, like hot dog beer bar type places.

[3:48]

And then also wrote what is it now? Well, wrote a billion years ago and then came out like a year and a half ago, right? Yeah, yeah. It takes a billion years to write a book. Slowest thing I've ever done.

[3:56]

Yes, be I'm just gonna get this out of the way right now. My kids, both my freaking kids, decide last week, in the middle of me writing a book that has a lot of meat cookery, that this is gonna be the time that they go vegetarian. Oof. You know what I'm talking about. It happens, right?

[4:12]

Yeah. Uh and so here it is. I'm like, you know, um you yeah, what am I gonna eat? A whole freaking crown roast by myself? I'm gonna eat like uh I'm gonna do like a Chateaubriand for one?

[4:23]

Like what like what the heck am I gonna do here? Invite the neighbors over, make good friends. Uh yeah, but you know what? I'm just not like that. I'm not like that.

[4:30]

So I don't know how it is in Portland. First of all, by the way, you guys uh over there at Olympia Provisions, the only people in Portland who are guaranteed to be working at any given time. Am I right? So true. Yeah, I mean, like what is what is it with Portland and the lack of like work?

[4:43]

They're there. But people are retiring when they're like 20. I know. A lot of them. I know.

[4:52]

I I get flack all the time for being hardworking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nastasia's got her Portland face on, which is I can't believe nobody's working here. Why really it's all jealousy? It's like why didn't why didn't we do this?

[5:02]

Yeah. Uh but anyway, I don't know how we got I don't know how we got on the subject of uh working in working in it. But anyway, so um so yeah, so this book came out in uh what, the end of 15 or something like that? Yeah, October. Um yeah, so it's called uh American Shark Equality Well, how do you pronounce the title?

[5:19]

American charcuterie Great question. Olympia do you start with the Olympia provisions? I say Olympia provisions. And then American charcutery Quality meets. Yep.

[5:27]

I say cured meats and tails by Olympia provisions from an American charcuterie. See how I had to read that? I like it. I like that. But anyway, what I'm gonna say about this book, and we actually talked about it a little bit in uh Portland.

[5:39]

It's a super pretty book. Like I think it's like a really, really beautiful book. Uh and um what I and I mentioned this to you and you actually said, I think, unless my memory is like zonked, I didn't have that much uh sparkling wine that day, that uh, you know, one of my favorite series of cookbooks in the world is the Time Life series of cookbooks uh that came out in I guess starting in the late 60s and going through the early 70s where they go around the world. And the cool thing about it is well the cool thing now is you can get them for like two dollars a piece, they're still free. It's they get the whole set.

[6:09]

People go out right now, go on eBay, get the whole set. A must-have. Yeah, must absolutely must-have. And uh they hired not that food photographers aren't real photographers, please don't get me I don't want to hear it, but they hired people who like were, you know, like for instance, sports illustrated photographers or uh, you know, general subject photographers. And so these books have some of the sickest photography like anywhere.

[6:33]

And so like a lot of the photos you have here have I mean they're modern, they're not from the 70s, sure, but they uh, you know, it's printed on that kind of matte paper, so it's got that awesome kind of flat feel to it. Totally. And you know, you've got a lot of like, you know, not straight recipe shots in it. Totally. Um and so anyway, so I think it's a really, really uh uh really beautiful book.

[6:55]

Thank you. And I also um I like the way that it's uh you know, it's per it's it's also personalized. You know what I mean? So it reminds me of like, you know, anyone who writes nowadays is gonna be obviously more not that he wasn't technically minded, don't get but like you know, Bertoli's book, Cooking by Hand, right, was I think an extremely personal book that was tackling some technical subjects before anyone else had written on this on these kinds of subjects before. Uh I still think it's a mean I haven't okay, I haven't read it in over a decade.

[7:24]

Still such an amazing book. Yeah, but I mean, great book. But so, like, you know, I really like books that are personal but that tackle uh like real issues uh in the kitchen. And you can tell when you go through it that this is you know, written uh, you know, I know some of the recipes are yours, some are like, you know, pastry chefs and a bunch of different people, but written by people who actually know what they're doing. It's not like you made this once and now you've written it down and that's it, which is you know an unfortunate thing cookbooks do.

[7:49]

Hey, speaking of reading, can you quickly read that thing I put in there? Oh god dang it. The pre-roll ad, we're gonna do some business. I gotta do some business. Today's program is brought to you by Modernist Pantry, providing magical ingredients for the modern cook for free videos, recipes, tips and tricks.

[8:03]

Visit blog.modernistpantry.com. Uh back to your regularly schedule program. Nailed it! All right, let me uh Nastasia, let me see the book for a second. I want to read this quote that I think Nastasia is gonna love the most out of the introduction because this is like this going back to like uh like a work ethic in Portland.

[8:19]

So you grew you like grew up like a Greek family in freaking Utah. Salt Lake City, Sam. What the heck's that all about? There's a lot of Greeks out there. Really?

[8:26]

Yeah, yeah. Like for the it's the same climate as like the Spartan and Mountain Greeks, you know, sagebrush, cold winters. There's a ton of Greek great Greek food. Really? Yeah, yeah.

[8:33]

So my dad moved out there because Copper Mine, the Kennicott Copper Mine was originally owned by a Greek man and he brought all of his hardworking Greek friends from the mountains to come mine it, and then they came back and told their children how amazing Salt Lake City is. At least that's how the story goes. And there's a ton of Greeks and a ton of Greek churches out there, and yeah, it's great food. So like uh is it is it is there a big culture clash between like, you know, the Greek Orthodox and the Mormon? Is there is there like a Yeah, you know, like Michelle and I and Billy Villamis, if you're out there, we're the only three Greeks in our elementary school.

[9:03]

And the rest were all LDS. LDS are beautiful people. There's a little quote in their little story in there that we got called to the uh principal's office because uh we stunk too much like garlic and the kids couldn't focus, and my father walked in and like super Greek, like at you know, thick accent and be like, your children smell like detergent and ripped us out of school. And like took us like it's like you're not going there. We're teaching you another rest of the year we stayed at home and homeschooled.

[9:26]

Well, this is gonna be a propos. So this is a quote of about your dad uh where you know you're I guess you know, uh paraphrasing what he might say to you. Need glue? Go cut into the pine tree and mix the sap with sand to make it pliable. Oh, you were planning on buying glue?

[9:41]

Are you lazy or just stupid? So true. Right? Yeah. And Stastasia, like now Nastasia didn't know you, but now she loves you because that's like her that's her whole attitude.

[9:51]

Uh her whole attitude on it. Also, another thing Nastassi's gonna like about it. You spend some time cooking in Switzerland. Yeah. This crazy did you see this place, Nastasia?

[9:59]

There he worked at this restaurant where it's like someone just I don't know how the hell they got the the building there, but it's like a carbuncle shoved onto the side of a freaking mountain. Yeah. Uh what's that what's that place called? That one's called the Hotel Asher or Berg Restaurant Asher. It's an app and cellar.

[10:16]

It's just on the fucking water. Where is the where is it? That's in the northeast corner of Switzerland. That's in the Cantoon Appenseller, but that whole region is called Sengala. So like uh Austria, Germany, the Bodensee, or what do you uh yeah, Lake Constance, all that right there.

[10:29]

It's the mountains right above that. How the hell do they get their fat well? First of all, like where are their customers coming from? Yeah, like the Swiss are super hardy people and they love to eat when they're hungry. And so like the idea of going on an all-day hike to eat like, you know, a huge smoked meat and chunk of cheese and like some fruit is just what they love to do.

[10:44]

And like you'll be out there hiking thinking you're pretty cool, and like a seven-year-old grandma will fly by you. Just being like, oh da do yodel it, and then cruising up to the Did you learn to Yoda while you're over there? No, not very good. I tried. Nastasi and I both love the yodeling game on the price is right.

[11:01]

Beautiful game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember that? What were we who are we making fun of? Temperature.

[11:06]

You need to add that in your book. The sous vide temperature, like the yodel. And then if you get the wrong temperature, it's overcome to the colour. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[11:13]

That's awesome. And and we were trying to remember the tune, I can never remember the tune. Right? We we could never like for some reason it's one of the you know there's those tunes that just leave your head and you can't get them back in your head. And then there's those tunes like the theme from Quincy that go into your head and you can't get them out of your head.

[11:27]

Three weeks later. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, or Rockford Files for that matter. But Rockford Files I feel deserves to be in your head. I mean, you know, Rockford Files and Sanford Sun, whenever those theme songs come into your head, you're like, all right.

[11:38]

It's a good day. That's good. Fair. That's that's just good business. Uh all right, so before we get uh too far in, uh a couple of bones I have to pick, so we might as well fight about it now.

[11:47]

We're both lovers of nitrate and uh nitrites, obviously, in curing. Uh and you make a lot of uh amusing points about uh you know, not kind of worrying about it, because a lot of people are worrying about it, especially over probably on the West Coast, you get all the right all the time. Literally for everything, that voice. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like uh you know the thing is I I think I've said this on air, but like uh it's only been the last three years that people have gotten through my armor at events.

[12:13]

Like usually I can maintain my kind of I'm happy to serve you customers always right kind of a thing. It's only been the past couple of years that somehow it's just like too many hits, and I'm like, I was like, ugh. Yeah, you do the breed. Yeah, yeah. And so he's like, what the hell is that?

[12:33]

Because I always ride her about it. You know what I mean? I always ride her like a pony for like for like showing her displeasure. Family show, family show. Well, oh, well, not like that.

[12:42]

You know what I'm saying? Dang, hands. Gutter Dave. Uh anyway, so like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

[12:53]

Only recently have it been like but the uh so you say that it's a hundred percent illegal to cure meats without uh you know nitrates or nitrates, but super long cure stuff like dry cure, like hams, like prosciutto de parma, you can do without nitrates. Not that you need to, not that I think it makes it better, but the classic Italian one nowadays is made without that stuff. And furthermore, you can do anything legally if you have the hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend that it's a safe process. To prove it. Yeah, you gotta prove it.

[13:21]

Yeah. You gotta prove it. But yes, in general, I think what you're like what I think you're probably reacting to. And Harold McGee sent me an email uh yeah about Oscar Meyer now is doing their nitrate-free nitrite-free hot dogs. Yeah, of course.

[13:34]

Hot dogs. And it says uh cured oh see, the only the nitrates, of course, this is the standard, only the nitrates naturally found in celery jokers. Like they should be everyone should be skewered. This is Whole Foods' fault. Of course.

[13:48]

Absolutely. This is freaking Whole Foods' fault. You know, Samantha, you don't flack for them, do you? No, I didn't. All right.

[13:53]

So like like it's a hundred percent their fault. It's garbage. I mean, the the food can be taste good, but the the the labeling is garbage. Yeah. It's total smoke and mirrors.

[14:02]

Everybody out there, I want you on all of your labels and in all of your food on your menu to write to write this. Contains no salt other than that naturally found in the ocean. That would be great. Yeah, and then you're like, oh, sea salt. Uh yeah.

[14:17]

Yeah, yeah, right? You can do it. Because it's the same freaking thing. You know what I mean? Absolutely.

[14:21]

It's like you take like eight billion. What do they do with the rest of the celery? Well, they just pure it. So they they load the they load the soil or chard or whatever they're using for their nitrate thing. They overload the manure with nitrate.

[14:32]

Right. And so when the the the spinach or the charred's growing in that, it picks up all the extra nitrate, the exact same compound that is in regular nitrate, then they puree and then they use that as their salt and their nitrate. It's just the same thing. Total loop pull. My favorite thing is that called Switzerland, right?

[14:44]

Where I did my apprenticeship and I was like, hey man, uh, you know, what are you guys doing about nitrate? Just total brain fart like they'd give a living shit about it. And they're like, hey, uh, what are you talking about? We give nitrate to our children when they're sick. Like this it's it's good for you.

[14:57]

It's a vitamin. I don't know what the hell's wrong with you Americans. And I'm like, I think good good conversation, I'm gonna leave now. Yeah, well, but on the other hand, the Europeans have their own issues, right? I mean, like every place has its own issues.

[15:06]

But before the uh cooking issues. Hey Nastasia, flip through there and look at the do you see the hot dog picture? I think I bookmarked it. Something about it? No, I just think it's like this is the kind of picture I like.

[15:16]

Like a bunch of hot dogs, and then like a couple pictures later, this this oh I know, this uh inn that's shoved into the side of a mountain. So question how the hell do they get their food into that place? Depending on where, so that this place is pretty amazing. The one it's called the Asher is because they their whole thing is they have these two gigantic limestone water pits behind there that that's the only water they can get up there. So the the water filters through the cliffs and lands in these limestone pits.

[15:41]

As soon as they're out of water, they're completely closed for the year, and then they go back to carrying me, hunting me, and raising meat. What do you think about that, Nastasia. Oh, yeah, it's super they're super freaking amazing. This place up there, to put it into perspective with two cooks, does about 500 covers at lunch. And they do rochsti, which is you know, boiled potatoes and that.

[15:57]

You know, now there's a tram it goes up the backside and they bring it across on mule. Um, but still, like the water and all the meat that the father and son bring up on mule or like twice a year. Literal pack mule. Pack mule. Yeah.

[16:08]

The one the bigger one, the one at the end there, the Rothstein Pass, the one at where you see these ibex there. This is the path to it. It's up like this cliff. And you run across it. That one, the only way to get anything up there is with mule.

[16:20]

So everything is brought up on mule. And they do uh Steinbock Pfeffer, which is those Ibex that are soured like sauerbratten, and then they slowly braise it and then they thicken it with blood. And so it makes this, then they can it and then they put it on the mules, and then they take it up top. And when you get up there, you're also gonna have rochdi steinbuckfeffer, applesauce, and sour cream. So like what's the portion size on that?

[16:40]

Really? Oh lunch. Yeah, no, like a rochdi. Go get a charcuterie board or a cheese plate at any one of these places, and it's like for 10 in America. Well, you hiked up the side of a freaking cake.

[16:49]

You deserve it. That's like uh that's like I was talking to uh a sherpa, uh, and he was like, I was like, yeah, how come you know you're Buddhist and everything, but you eat meat? He's like, You have we eat nothing but fat. We live at the top of a freaking mountain. Yeah, we need so many calories.

[17:03]

And carrot after climbing Everstone. No, no. Pound yak and yak meat, yak fat, yak butter, and yak milk. I was like, that makes total sense. Yeah, that makes total sense to me.

[17:14]

So, did you get to go hunting when you were in Switzerland or no? Yeah, the guy, so the guy that I worked with that I did my apprenticeship under was the Jaegermeister of the Valley. So he owned this hotel and butcher property. By the way, people that means hunt hunting master and not the liqueur. The liquor master we got to drink.

[17:29]

No. So if you wanted to shoot an animal in our valley, you had to go to Bjerger and ask him if there was any unhealthy animals. Could you hunt it? Where should I do it? And after you shot the animal, you'd bring it to our restaurant and our butcher shop, and we'd process it for you.

[17:42]

You know, there was tons of different ways we could process, sell it back to you, buy it off you, use it in the restaurant, but we would cure and ferment and make all of our meat out of like you know, two to three hundred wild animals a month. Um the Jaegermeister is literally like a traffic cop for shooting animals. Exactly. And he knows where they're all at, so like every single day he's up super early with binoculars, like just scoping for animals. And he took me uh a couple times with him.

[18:04]

I was never able to kill an animal, but like after year three of me like cutting up animals and working my ass off, he's like, Tomorrow we go hunting. And I was like, Holy shit. Oh nice. So like what is he like take the one with the busted horn? It's not so good in the picture.

[18:16]

Yeah, but was it like it's like the sick ones. You know, they they don't shoot young ones. Like there's a story here in there where he shot his first elk. It's very hard to find elk up there. And so that's very small herds.

[18:28]

And he got an elk from his like all the other Jaegermeisters met and said there's this young elk coming up. You follow it until it's sick and you kill it, and he followed it for 14 years. And he kept every one of it sheds. So every time it shedded every year, he followed it and then he finally shot it stuck in a snowbank. So like it was on its deathbed, and he's like, I think the other Jaeger's like he was actually in Austria across from Switzerland.

[18:50]

He's like, I see your elk, Björger, come shoot. So I like that voice, even though they're German floor. I like that. So wait, so here's so they're predominantly hunting older animals then. Yeah.

[19:01]

So how's that for cooking? It's it's musky, but I love that. Like I I like game funk, you know. Have you been to uh the Spanish people who do the raised super old cows? Like, you know, Jeffrey Steingarden and Harold McGee were like, Oh, oh, the seven-year-old cows, mah mah ma.

[19:17]

I mean, they don't talk like that, but you know what I mean. But like, man, mah mah man. I'm I'm Jeffrey Steingarden, man, man, mah man. Uh but uh the uh no, but I mean, like, you know, it's this it's this thing in Spain, obviously, everyone in America shies away from old meat in general. Um, but I mean, just from a cooking standpoint, so are you I mean, uh do people respond to the different texture well over there?

[19:41]

Or like when you're cooking for an American, you can't really translate that kind of a recipe. Totally. Yeah. I mean, like the an old, like a five-year-old Ibex liver, for example, and you would eat liver all that like the wild animal liver is so sought after, you're not serving that to anybody in America. They're like they're taking they're taking a bite of that.

[19:58]

I know like uh Americans who won't eat deer liver over a year old. Right. You know what I mean? Like they're like, you know, God, I love deer liver. I know, but you're absolutely right.

[20:06]

Like, I mean, you'll you'll you'll see people hunting that lead two-thirds of the animal out there, and you're just like, yeah, in Europe that does not ride. You're never gonna stumble upon like a half-clean carcass. It's like whole animal brought out, everything utilized, everything enjoyed, very, very much so. All right, by the way, do you do any low temperature cooking with with hunting? You ever uh pull out a circulator and bust it down?

[20:24]

No, I'm so old school, I don't even know what I'm like a circulator is. Everything I make takes like you know, natural fermentation. I know it's amazing. People do God's work with those things. I just don't know how.

[20:34]

Well, I mean, the the interesting thing is I never have access to really old old meat. So I'm curious about it. Like the, you know, I've cooked super old meat um only occasionally, and you only get it from like weird people. And there was this guy in Chicago who used to sell uh that kind of meat, but I since found out that he uh basically not only should he go to prison, he did go to prison for doing like illegal uh animal practices, so I don't buy from him anymore. Probably a good idea.

[21:04]

Yeah, you know what I mean. Uh but anyway, so yeah. Well I can hook you up. I'll I I can find old meat for you for sure. I have a big elk hunt coming up this spring that I'm looking to get like a an old bull elk.

[21:14]

So if I get one. Are people worried with older elk now about chronic wasting? Or is that people not worry about that anymore? I haven't had anybody worry about it in a long time. So yeah.

[21:24]

Nice. I mean, I'll I'll shoot an old elk. See, I get cow tags, right? Every every year. That's where you shoot the female cow, and I usually use those for my meat at home.

[21:31]

And that's very often ethically thought they kill the calves, the very young baby elk or a cow. And they like that because it's like the veal of it, and I've never been able to do that yet. To shoot like a six-month-old elk. I always shoot the mom elk. Now, but from an ethics standpoint, is that if you're shooting the young one, it's like, well, he had a bad shot anyway.

[21:49]

It's like he was gonna die maybe anyway, so kill him now. Yeah. I think ethically, people are trying to justify. I don't know why I try to get the most amount of meat out of animals that I kill. Uh, is that if you kill their mom, the calf's probably gonna die too.

[22:02]

So you just have you have to spend a lot of time like making sure that the the calf that you're about, or excuse me, the the cow that you're about to kill isn't about to, you know, doesn't have a calf. Right. Right. And well, it's also like I think people would be shocked. I looked at the numbers a long time ago, but in the East Coast in hunting areas, like the the percentage of deer that deer now, because they we don't have anything else here, right?

[22:26]

But the percentage of deer that are gonna end up on you know in a hunter's plate is extraordinarily high, right? I mean, like I mean, like it's more than you'd think. Oh, here I would imagine. Yeah, like it's a three-day season and like four thousand elk or deer get killed in a day or something like that. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.

[22:43]

Uh speaking of hunting, so you you have brought something. I did. I'm super happy about this. We I do a lot of bird hunting in Oregon, and we talked about it lately, and I know that you wanted to get back into bird hunting at some point in your life. Um, I've never gotten to do it.

[22:56]

I've always wanted to. You've never done it either. No, I've always wanted to. Well, it's not true. In Italy once, in Italy, I went on a BS pheasant hunt.

[23:05]

It was it was they're fake. It's fake. Planted pheasants and bird dogs. Yeah, it's fake. Yeah.

[23:10]

I didn't feel so good about it. I ate the bird. It's delicious meat. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[23:15]

You know, you know, but you know, it's not hunting, right? No, it's it's it's more, I think it's more for training the dogs and then getting the the rifle ready to or like your shotgun good at shooting. I I utilize it once a year. Yeah, right at the beginning I try to tune my dogs up. This dog in Italy was like so stupid too.

[23:31]

It was the dumbest. It was like it was like at the very beginning of the season, and we weren't like their real customers, and so they were testing out like their new dog on us. And so Nastasia, this people are gonna like call this is how this works, though, people. They they take and they just they disorient the pheasant so that it doesn't immediately take off, right? Wow, that is really and then they put it in a bush.

[23:53]

You know what bush it's in, right? Well, in this scenario, they were shooting it for something, like you know, and then and then the then they let go of the dog and the dog's just sitting there scratching its ear. No. And they're like, uh Hey, a fightal. You know, and they're like, uh and like I don't know what they call dogs.

[24:14]

And uh it's when we were shooting a uh we were shooting a piece on uh ancient um ancient cooking techniques, and they wanted us to actually go get the animals even though it was Roman, even though the Romans actually would have raised their pheasants in captivity and just broken their necks and not there wouldn't be all this like you know, buckshot. Yeah, not a lot of shotguns in Roman era, right? Not too many. You know what I mean? Uh, you know, and you know, it I doubt the average Roman was sitting there like, you know, hurling rocks at pheasants to try to get yeah.

[24:42]

I mean, like, you know, this is a sophisticated group of people, and they, you know, they had, you know, they raised pheasants, and they you know, they definitely, I'm sure the Romans, if they were gonna train their dogs, would have done a better job. Catch the pheasant. Yeah, and so like they they started chucking things towards the bush to get the dog to look at the bush. That's horrible. It's so depressing.

[25:02]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then finally, you know, uh, we're sitting there and we're like, oh, and then it takes off. It was a good bird, tasted good, although I forget you're gonna have to so what do you have here? Show me the bird you had you brought in. Yeah, I got you a chucker, and this is a true wild Oregon chucker, not so that these when you shoot these, they're up on the rim rock way above like the rivers, like the John Day.

[25:18]

This one came off of the John Day, and they're um non-native to Oregon, but they're the most amazing game birds. So they called so they're invasive? Uh they're not invasive. They plant them for they planted them for game birds, you know, 20 years, 30 years ago. And now they've just done amazing.

[25:32]

And so how do they taste relative to like uh so the size here, they're bigger than a pigeon, a squab they're squabish size. They're squabbish, slightly larger. They're about you know a little bit smaller than a good grouse or a rough grouse. Um, but they are very plentiful and they're amazing. They live up in the sagebrush, and so they eat a lot of sage, and so their flavor picks up like that real wild sage.

[25:56]

Pass it over? Yep. But yeah, they're they're super fun, and they're like one of the hardest game birds to shoot. Like they your dog will point them maybe sometimes a half a mile out, and uh, you know, you'll you'll get up on your dog and you'll know which direction they're gonna fly, and twenty to thirty of them are flush, and you'll miss all of them. And then, you know, one out of ten you'll probably hit.

[26:15]

Okay, so I'm looking at this bird here. I'm terrible at plucking birds, by the way. Yeah. I'm just terrible at the big time to start. Yeah, but you should we we're not gonna pluck this right now, are we?

[26:23]

Like, so on a game bird, right? So I know like I know like on like uh I've done pheasant not just in that time in Italy, but in France. You know, you go to France and you could buy pheasant on the you know, on the feather or whatever they call it, feathered uh in the you know GBA shops, you know what I mean? Or and uh you go there, and once those feathers set, man, plucking is a nightmare. Brutal.

[26:45]

Is this gonna be a similar situation? You know, Chucker, like those desert birds, chucker, quail, grouse, and all the ones that have more fat live in a burlier from hot to cold climate are much easier to pluck than pheasants. Pheasants are the most difficult bird to pluck in the whole world. Very s like they're just horribly weak to have. Oh, yeah.

[27:00]

I ruined the skin. Totally. Yeah, depending on that one looks like we shot it pretty good. So I don't see many bullet holes in there. Where is it?

[27:06]

Where is it shot? It looks like it's like in the neck and the wing right there. And that could have been a runner. Like I could have I could have winged it, which is ideal, and then the dog grabs it and brings it to you. But yeah, you know.

[27:15]

Now, do you don't hang these things until they start stinking? You're not one of those kind of guys. This is why I brought you this one. Uh I'm not. I'm usually not, but I was hunting with this guy and we had like one of those great days where we each got like our limit, which is fifteen of those birds in a day.

[27:28]

It was an amazing, amazing day. And he told me that he enjoys the flavor of freezing them whole with the guts in them. And so that's what we got here. I have three of them that I have a lot of things. It's two cool in my light.

[27:38]

And there's a ch so all the like this is how he does it, and he loves the flavor more. So he doesn't dress it out. Doesn't dress it. So he does draw it before he before he cooks it. Yeah.

[27:59]

Before he cooks it do that for sure. So it's not like it's not like uh like uh remember that remember that uh woodcock we had? Oh, that people hang with the guts in and stuff. It was the most disgusting I I liked it, I liked eating it, but for Nastasia watching her face was the most disgusting ate it, this stuff was flying on my face too. It was disgusting.

[28:25]

So when you're hunting a small bird, right? The flavor probably changes a lot depending on what you puncture, right? Yeah, totally the the the biggest flavor I always say about like the grouse is the best, you know. Grouse live in the forest. The sagebrush, excuse me, so like you know, uh chuckers and other desert Hungarian partridge live in the sage.

[28:43]

They pretty much have one diet. But a grouse, like a mountain grouse in the spring eats berries, and then once it gets into chloe later in the fall, it eats like rose hip and gooseberry, and then in the midwinter it eats pine. It's like pure pine lives up pine and juniper berries. And that's the biggest flavor difference because you can see it when you open up that bird, you open up its crop right here, you'll see what it's been eating. So this one should be full of sage and seed.

[29:05]

What do you do? You cut here and clean out, and then you do the triangle by the butt and rip the stuff out? Just like a smaller version of a chicken? Absolutely. 100% exactly, just like that.

[29:13]

Yeah. Beautiful. All right. Well, we'll post some pictures. It looks like you got clipped on the back a little bit.

[29:19]

There it goes. Yeah, maybe that's where it was at. But I, you know, then again, I haven't ever I've never frozen a full bird and ate it myself. So it'll be a good one. Yeah, we'll we'll give some.

[29:28]

And luckily, this is uh you know, a serving size for one, so my kids are just vegetarian, won't have to worry about it. Well, thanks so much. Of course, yeah. This is awesome. I've never been no one's ever brought a uh a whole bird on the feather to uh to cooking issues before.

[29:45]

So uh I guess we should answer some high tech Dave, we got anything. Yeah, you want to take a call? Yeah, as many as we got. We got some caller, you're on the air. What do you got?

[29:54]

Hi, Dave, this is Colton from Vale, Colorado. How are you doing? Doing well. How are you guys? All right.

[29:59]

Um, so first of all, uh big fan of the show and big fan of liquid intelligence. I actually use that book a lot more in the kitchen than I do for cocktails. But anyway, great book. Thank you. Um I got a couple questions.

[30:14]

First one is on Ultra Text. Okay. Um why are you using Tex and not Spurse, by the way? I'm sorry? Why are you using Tex and not Spurse?

[30:26]

Um it's just what we have at the restaurant I work at. All right, go ahead. But anyway, um, we make a spinach puree at the restaurant, and we've been having trouble keeping it green for more than a day. Um what he usually does and what usually works for stuff like that is pureeing the spinach, the blanched and shock spinach with a little bit of ascorbic acid, um ultratex, and a touch of like some neutral cooking oil. Um but I don't after all the research that I've done, I can't find a reason why that would work.

[31:03]

Um do you have any thoughts on that? Any advice? No, I don't. I'll say this. So Ultratex for uh by the way, I would switch to Spurs.

[31:11]

Uh but like U Ultra Tex is a um a precooked uh uh starch, right? So you know, so what it has the ability to do that a regular starch wouldn't have the ability to do is absorb liquid. So basically what you're doing is just um you're just uh sequestering some of the liquid in with the starch. So maybe that's helping you out a little bit. It's also gonna help uh run out on the puree.

[31:40]

So I don't know if it's gonna help with the greening, but it's gonna help uh with that gross runoff that spinach puree has. You know what I'm talking about? You all know what I'm talking about, right? That's why you squeeze it so hard. Yeah, yeah, it's why you squeeze the ever loving hell out of it.

[31:54]

Uh and that's and that squeeze water also is an ugly color typically in my experience. Um the reason I switched to Spurse is um Spurse is what's called it's the s same product as uh as Ultratext, but it's pre-agglomerated, so it's like uh it it it looks more like uh it looks more like uh like bisquick or something. It dissolves easier. Uh not that you're gonna have that much problem with clumping in spinach puree, but if you were to throw it in pure water, it would. Uh ascorbic acid is gonna prevent uh any enzymatic action, but the thing you have to worry about with acids is too much acid and you'll start destabilizing the chlorophyll.

[32:37]

Uh but I don't know I don't know uh Elias, you got any good keeping spinach puree tricks old school? Yeah, I just yeah, I I puree it in a blender to keep it really, really cold with ice. Yeah, keep it spinning. So I just squeeze it, then like if I do a spinach puree, just blanch it, instantly shock it, squeeze the hell out of the water, add the cooked shallots, puree it just barely in a Vitamix and then put it instantly on ice. Yeah, just keeping it cold.

[33:01]

I think the key for me, the key is to squeezing. Yeah, get the water out. Yeah. And like I'm talking like do you do the towel thing? You got it.

[33:11]

Yeah. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, you put it in the towel and then you twist the towel and twist it and twist it. Yeah. Twist it. Toward show and style.

[33:19]

Yeah, yeah. And it and it just, you know, all that liquid comes out. Yeah, so I don't know. Maybe like uh do you get a lot of uh if you squeeze the hell out of it, you're still getting a lot of sineresis, a lot of liquid coming out of it? Uh no, it's pretty yeah, sometimes you can squeeze it so hard, at least for the blender, you have to add a little bit of water.

[33:33]

Yeah. Uh so but you you find that uh your chef's recipe is working for you or not working for you. You just want to know the mechanism. Yeah, I mean I I just kind of wanted to prove them right or prove them wrong. I mean, the the best way to prove the best way to prove something right or something wrong is offline at home, make it a different way, keep it for however long and bring it in and be like, hey chef, I'm I made this, what do you think?

[34:00]

And then see what they see what they say. I mean, the worst way to do it is to change the way it's done on the line. Yeah. That's the absolute worst thing you can do. Go time and like uh Yeah, but like, you know, any I'm just gonna go ahead and and and say say I'm gonna say this and see Elias what you think is that if you do something on your own time with your own product and it's good and you bring it in and your chef doesn't have doesn't won't respect that and take a look at it, maybe you should be working for a different chef.

[34:29]

Yeah, absolutely. Uh it's gotta be a creative conglomerate. You know, it's like fun. I love when anybody comes in. I mean I mean I make what 7,000 pounds of sausage a day and I still listen to people salami about the technique that I use.

[34:40]

If they have an idea of how to make it more uniform, let's talk. Right here. Especially if someone proves it. Like, you know, I'll take any dogma that I'm running down for years, you you show me that that there's a better way, I will adopt it immediately. Absolutely.

[34:51]

And I think that's a sign of uh I mean in in any field, that's a sign of intelligence. You know what I mean? Uh I think it's you know, it becomes problematic when if someone goes so hard on dogma, especially like in print and on TV, that it becomes hard for them to change. But that's when you you can tell if someone's a real, like, you know, if they're really hardcore about what they do and not just about being who they are. You know what I mean?

[35:17]

Absolutely. Then they'll they'll change. So anyway, let don't do some experiments and shoot us back and t say what you know, tell us what you find out. Dave, you got any uh spinach freaks on the uh on the chat room. Don't even know what's going on.

[35:28]

Let me check and get back to you. Speaking of uh like uh tips and tricks, uh I that I we had a walnut question in a couple of weeks ago about how to get easily get the skin, the tannic skin off of a walnut. Now you can buy non-tannic walnuts, I don't know where they get them. Harold McGee gets good ones. I haven't spoken to him yet uh whether he has any tips.

[35:46]

But I said I was gonna talk to a guy whose grandpa was a walnut farmer, but it turns out he doesn't grow walnuts, he only grows almonds or almonds as he calls it. Almonds. Almonds. And uh it's unfortunate because he would have had the this guy uh like you know, 60 years ago was in an airplane accident. He was flying, he lost his leg and one eye.

[36:04]

Whoa. Yeah, yeah, and he's like still like an almond farmer. So I figured if anyone knew how to do it, but you know, it's easy to get the skin, not easy, it's a pain in the butt, but it's technically easy to get the skins off of an almond. But uh walnuts, I don't know. Can you blanch a walnut?

[36:18]

Yeah, blanch them. And do the towel rub? Yeah, blanch them, then re-roast them and then chop them and then do the the seep and try to get the skin through the course seep is the way I do it. And it's still not like a perfectly I don't forget whether this person wanted whole halves. I mean, that's it.

[36:33]

The good thing about an almond is you can get the skin off of it and still have it be in beautiful shape. Beautiful shape. Yeah. You know what I mean? Uh but the good thing about nuts that I think people, as long as you don't soak the beejesus out of them uh such that you've actually leaching a bunch of flavor out of them, they can take a good number of like get it wet, get it dry, get it wet, get it dry.

[36:54]

I mean, that they're pretty. You know what I mean? Especially you gotta trade that off with a wallet, like if you hate how a tannic armament or you know, all or a walnut does your tongue and makes it all fucked up blanch it for a second then roast it at least you'll get all that bitters out there and the tan right because all that stuff is is A on the outside and B water soluble that's a good tip right there. Look at that for a sausage maker I know way around a nice well uh so do you do that to the do you do the walnut and sausage thing? I do it in pate like once or twice a year.

[37:19]

Yeah like I'll make a uh a walnut pate for sure with no cello and whatnot. I think they're delicious, especially with game birds. When you serve a pate like what do you think about remember like five or six years ago or maybe even longer now ten years ago the like the big thing not on pate was go to foie gras straight right the big chunk now I have to say are you a hot or a cold if you could choose only one would you choose hot or cold? Foie gras? Yeah.

[37:42]

That's a tough one huh I'm gonna go cold because I can have it in more places. 99 out of a hundred chefs do that but I just love hot so much. Yeah anyway what about you stuff? Cold Samantha? I like cold too.

[37:55]

99 out of a hundred I'm like I actually really like the old school like just quick search like lightly war lightly warm in the middle like maybe some like you know maybe some you know peach. Yeah crunchy salt or something yeah anyway. So you want to take a quick break? Well one second. So like one thing that makes me upset is like when you don't serve the when you don't serve it with any form of e like no no acidic accompaniment and no crunchy starch.

[38:25]

I need an acidic accompaniment and I need a crunchy starch. Pate as well like I want give me some sort of bread. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

[38:31]

Especially like to, but like, have you seen if you notice this where like someone will give you a big plate of of like either pate or something? And then nothing, nothing to break up the the the uncuousness. Absolutely. No. Yeah.

[38:42]

You gotta have crunchy bread or good bread or baguette for a pate. An old school French chef shall remain nameless. It was Alain Sayac. Uh he I was I once he they used to do a country pate at the French Culinary Institute. I like country pate, it's like the next guy.

[38:57]

And they would put the little cornichant, right? Which I kind of like corny sham. I'm gonna set to go say, I'm gonna say I kind of like cornichant. They're not my favorite pickle. I mean, uh the texture is bad, right?

[39:08]

Cornychan. The texture is bad. Yeah, they they're they're a good crunch, but there's better crunches out there. Yeah, much better crunches. I mean, the cucumber didn't want to be murdered at that age.

[39:16]

It wanted to grow bigger. Yeah, it wanted to be more of a pickle. It's like it's like the baby corn is is garbage. I mean, like I like that's that's a true fact. Yeah, I like the way they look kind of like theoretic, but it's garbage.

[39:26]

It's a garbage product. It's a garbage product. Yeah, it's a garbage product. Uh so the what do you think, Stas? You hate that stuff, right?

[39:32]

Hey baby corn. So uh Samantha? I agree. Dave? Yeah, not a fan.

[39:37]

Yeah, okay. Stop stop putting those things in cans. First of all, like what do they where do they get I mean like that's true? Maybe a really good baby corn is delicious, but I've never had that. I ripped one right off of a stock once, and I was like, this is garbage.

[39:48]

And I boiled it. I was like, anyway, but so that that's not the point. That's not the point. Uh so I was like, hey, chef, uh, you know what would be good? And he serves it with bread because come on, he's an old school French guy.

[39:58]

I was like, I really like like a coarse grain mustard with my country pate. He's like American. And walked away. Yeah. That's what he said.

[40:10]

I was like, what? Get out of here. It's not a good thing. Mustard's good. Yeah.

[40:12]

Come on. I just you just gotta you you always you have to remember you just gotta make people happy. If they wanted freaking ketchup on it, and that's the way that they enjoyed my pate. More too, yeah. Right, but I'm not gonna do it.

[40:22]

I'm not gonna touch the stuff. But I mean, like, you know, like would don't you think that don't you think that a coarse grained mustard is a better acidic slash pungent accompaniment to a country pate than a freaking corny show no matter how French it is? Absolutely. They're uh uh uh whole whole grain mustards on every charcuterie board that I sell at every one of my places no matter what. Thank you.

[40:40]

Thank God. It's just the pr it's perfect. It goes with everything. It's bright, it tastes good. All right, we'll take a break.

[40:45]

We'll come back with more uh Lias Cairo, more cooking issues. This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the immersion circulator for Sous Vide by Chef Steps. If you're listening to this show, you're probably a pretty good cook. Maybe you already know that Sous vide is the best way to get a kick-ass juicy steak. And with Jewel, a new Sous vide tool from Chef Steps, you can do so much more.

[41:14]

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[41:50]

For more information and to order yours now, visit Chef Steps.com slash J O U L E. Trooper, premium British beer, handcrafted by Robinson's brewery in Cheshire, England, and created by Iron Maiden. That's what we're gonna be having with our lunch today. I mean, like, Nastasi, where did this beer come from? I have no idea.

[42:15]

You just brought it. It was like this is for Dave. Alright, so I'll give you some props if you can tell me why Iron Maiden is a particularly for someone like me, uh, an important metal band. Bass. Why?

[42:27]

I don't know. Man played with three fingers. He only had three fingers? No. He played with in other words, like the typical bass player plays with two fingers.

[42:36]

He was like, What's wrong with you? You know what I mean? How do you not? What are you doing all day not knowing that? What are you doing?

[42:44]

Fail. Dave, what do you think about it? As a music guy, what are you what are your thoughts? Do you ever listen to that stuff? They're great, yeah.

[42:49]

Do you like you know like those are the original t-shirts with uh what's his name? Eddie, right? Yeah. Like the they're like fantastically expensive now. Yeah, I'm not surprised.

[42:59]

There's like a weird vintage rock tea market. I know. It's crazy. You know, those things were unconscionably expensive at the time they were new. They should go way down in value.

[43:08]

That should be the that should be the purchase that you get slapped for later, and you're like, I can't believe I spent $40 on that concert t-shirt. But now you're sitting pretty. Now you're sitting pretty. It's like old programs. It's like I have the original 77 Star Wars program, and apparently that's uh worth something.

[43:21]

Uh anyways. Did you spend 40 bucks for that program? No, I spent like I think it might have came with the ticket. There you go. You know what I mean?

[43:28]

Like, you know, I was a little young. I don't know. Back then your parents just paid for crap and you didn't know. You know what I mean? Uh so Dave, you want me to do this business before we get back into real stuff?

[43:36]

Yes, please. This is what we call people the mid-roll ad. Even though it's coming at the end of the show. It's this is the mid-roll ad. Well, I have no control over that, but you do.

[43:46]

Oh. Are we getting back? We're getting back into the state. It's Testy Day. Uh Modernist Pantry was created by food lovers and cooking issues fans, just like you.

[43:56]

Janie, Chris, and the Modernist Pantry family share your passion for experimentation and have everything you need to make culinary magic happen in your own kitchen. Professional chef, home cook, food enthusiasts, no matter what your skill or experience, Modernist Pantry has something for you. They make it easy to get the ingredients and tools you need and can't find anywhere else, so you can spend less time hunting and gathering, although you'd hate that. Yeah, who doesn't want to hunt and gather? Right.

[44:17]

Uh, and more time creating memorable dishes and culinary experiences. Visit modernistpantry.com today to discover why cooking issues listeners call Modernist Pantry the cook's secret weapon. Be sure to check out their new kitchen alchemy. It's not really new anymore, Dave. It's like, you know.

[44:31]

Anyway. Uh be sure to check out their new kitchen alchemy blog at blog.modernistpantry.com for free recipes, tips, and tricks. And don't forget to follow Modernist Pantry on social media to keep up with what's new and exciting in the world of culinary ingredients and tools. Great. Nailed it again.

[44:45]

Nailed, nailed it. All right, let's do it. Should we do a couple? Let's do it. Call or on the air.

[44:51]

Hey Dave, how's it going? This is Jason from Atlanta. How you doing? How's Atlanta? Do it.

[44:55]

I'm doing well. I hear it's like eight billion degrees down there. Yeah, you like coming by your hotlanta name properly now. Yeah, people actually live in Atlanta that actually call it Hotlanna. That's just the outsiders.

[45:05]

Yeah, well, I am in fact an outsider. Do you not listen to Ludacris if you're actually from Atlanta or do you do that? Well, who doesn't? Oh, there you go. Okay.

[45:13]

All right. All right. So what's up? Question about fish sauce. So I'm looking to make my own fish sauce.

[45:18]

Um, and I was wondering if there's a reason why traditionally uh oily fish are used, anchovies and sardines. And would it still work uh with pretty much any other kind of fish, maybe even lake fish, perch, trout. Um anything w is there a limitation as to what fish you should and shouldn't use. Okay. So I'm gonna weigh in for a second, and I'm sure Elias has some stuff to say about this, you know, with the gr the Greekness will come in at a certain point.

[45:46]

So uh here's the thing like typically fish sauce is made with like fish that you gather kind of in abundance and you aren't cooking as a whole kind of a a fish, and so like a you gather lots of these oily fish, like you get lots of mackerel, you get lots of sardines, you get lots of anchovies. Right. Uh and so I think that's like one of the reasons, but they're classic ones that are made with squid and that's not oily, uh made with the guts. Um you get ones that are made uh I mean typically, you know, most traditional recipes are built around a less waste phenomenon. And so like anything that you would like stake out or cook, you wouldn't turn into a uh a a fish sauce.

[46:26]

Um, and and there are some fish sauces, like the famous uh what the garum, which is the Roman one, changed a lot depending on what grade you were buying and what era of the Roman Empire you're dealing with, but like one of the high grades at a certain time was all guts. So it's just you know, mackerel guts. Do you got any experience making fish? You ever make fish sauce? I never made fish sauce, no.

[46:45]

You should make it stuff's delicious. Stinky delicious. Yeah, but I love it, so I should make it. I can't believe it haven't made it. Yeah.

[46:50]

But the bottom line is yes, it should work with pretty much any fish. Yes, I would say it would work with a lot of fish. Uh there are some people who believe, and I've never done the test, that uh the smaller fish have a good uh gut to meat ratio, and that it's the it's the it's the guts that are like kick starting all of that like stuff that's going on. I've heard people say that. Do I have any experience?

[47:16]

I don't. That makes sense. Okay. And w any any idea of using um I guess more specifically to the Shiri uh squid based fish sauce, if using frozen squid uh would be a problem. I think it should not be a problem, but most of the most of the squid that I buy that's frozen is cleaned already.

[47:38]

Do you have a source of you right? Yeah. Yeah you might be right. I mean like the best thing to do is if you get squid is like clean them, scrape all the cleaning stuff into the bucket to make your fish sauce and then you know do your do your whatever you're doing with the are you a fan uh Elias of turning the squid inside out before you stuff it where you take the you take the mantle and you flip it inside out so that when it cooks it like squeezes into the stuffing. I've never done that.

[48:02]

I stuff a lot of squid I always pipe it into the squid. Right. Well this old French guy uh he used to like before he he would do that but before he'd do it he would turn it inside out and he said he would get a tighter that's a good idea. Yeah. I can't wait to try that.

[48:15]

Yeah give us a let me know. It's a chef Didier we used to at uh I forget his last name. French guy. Anyway uh yeah but so but listen let us know what's going on. I'll give the um fish sauce a try using some uh some fish I can catch and uh by the way I'm with you on the foie gras hot all the way.

[48:32]

There you go. Someone someone's got to agree with me at some point. All right thanks. Uh let's know how the fish sauce goes. Um do you how do you start the fermentation on a fish sauce?

[48:41]

Just friggin' salt. Just salt and just leave it in there. No mother, nothing just it just ferments on its own naturally it gets crazy. I mean that's uh we look I we started making it once for the same thing I was talking about. We were in Italy we were doing the Roman thing and we just hacked them up and then like put salt in.

[48:55]

Yeah. Uh and no uh but uh I've never like made it through from beginning to end, but there's a bunch of people now who have done it and made some really high kind of grade uh high grade fish sauce. I love fish sauce. You know what I mean? Fish sauce is and I'm gonna be using a lot more of it now because the kids are pescatarian now.

[49:13]

Oh, so see how long this lasts, right? Take the bird, maybe they'll want some bird. I'm gonna eat the whole bird. But kids aren't, you know what? Here's the thing like I feel that like if you make that choice, I'm like, hey, you made that choice.

[49:25]

It's true. That's your choice. Yeah, I went vegetarian for a while for a skateboard. My skateboard broke in Salt Lake and I didn't have any money. And my bud I ate so much meat being Greek, and they're like, if you go a week without eating meat, we'll uh buy a skateboard.

[49:38]

And so I like took the bet, and then I got a girlfriend who's vegetarian in that week, and I was vegetarian for like three months. Wow. It's pretty impressive. Wow. So then as soon as that relationship ended, back to the meat.

[49:49]

Lamb rib. Was it part of the was that part of the reason the real relationship ended, or no? No, she just didn't like me anymore. Wow. Well, because you're spending too much time skateboarding.

[49:59]

Exactly. Yeah, young. So what's that dish? What's that Greek dish? They uh spit roast lamb intestines where you wrap all the intestines around the spit and then you like cook it like a big party food.

[50:08]

What's that called again? Yeah, I don't know what it's called, but yeah, it's delicious. Absolutely. You ever make that stuff? Yeah, well, I've make it with goat, yeah, where we restuff the, we take out the goat carcass, we debone it, then we rest we chop up the intestines with the liver, the heart, and the kidney, quickly saute the season that, and then put it inside of the wrapped goat and then fire roast the whole thing.

[50:25]

That's delicious. Well, here's a question for a couple questions. One, I noticed in your book, I know Nastasia noticed this. I I think I bookmarked the page. Your porchetta is not what we would call a porchetta, it's more of like a whole Yeah.

[50:37]

That's what I call a porchetta. Yeah, looked good. You see that stuff? It's like stuff with like so uh, you know, I'm obsessed with this Colombian dish, but instead of a meat stuffing, it's meat and rice stuffing. That's so good.

[50:47]

Yeah. Yeah. Crispy, you know, crispy pork skin plus anything, basically. Yeah. Win.

[50:52]

Yeah, absolutely. Win. Yeah, and that's the big challenge about a porchetta is like you anybody can stuff a pork, but getting the skin perfectly crisped up, and there's a million tricks to that. Oh, are you are you what do you believe? Are you a believer?

[51:02]

Do you baking soda it? No. Do you prick it? I prick it and then blanch it. So I can't.

[51:06]

So you do the branch and then throw hot water over it. Plate will blanch. Larry pour over, not a dip, pour over. Pour over. If I had a pot big enough, I would love to dip it.

[51:14]

Nothing in the water. Nothing in the water. And then I salt the shit out of it and then leave it overnight in salt and then uh start with a low temperature. Right. And then when it gets to 90 degrees, I crank my oven all the way up until it's just about on fire, and then that turns into a little tironis.

[51:28]

And it does the puff out. It drops up and it gets all the holes and all the grease, cooks the skin and it's crunchy, and then you can just slice it and it's I love it. Hey Dave, we gotta go before we do. Chat room is demanding an update on the spinzall that you promised. We have this, we have the update.

[51:44]

You know, we uh I'm sending uh we we have the picture of the first off tooling, this is the centrifuge that I'm working on a lot. So uh we have uh the uh a video of it of uh the first off tooling one running, the one that we took to Scotland, and we're gonna send that out, and then we'll probably send out a uh more uh substantive one next week, and then after I get back from China, we will send out another one. Uh but you know that's probably the ones we're gonna definitely send out before the um ship date happens. Um we didn't get to uh we had a question on uh adding silver powder to a cocktail. I don't think it's necessarily a good idea.

[52:23]

Do you know that you ever you know colour silver? You guys heard of colour silver? So people take colloidal silver, uh, and this is not the same thing, but they they some people think it has a health thing, but if you drink too much of it, you turn blue permanently. Like the silver gets into your skin. Generally not a good look.

[52:39]

Bruised up. Uh you know, you look like you remember that in Appala in Appalachia, there were these uh there was this group of people that uh didn't have that like turned they were blue naturally, like they had some sort of like genetic thing with them. So you look and you end up looking kind of like that, which is kind of kind of messed up. Yeah. Uh and so we gotta go.

[52:57]

All right, Wes. Next week I'll talk to you about deep fryers and what deep fryer I use and how to choose a deep fryer and all that good stuff. Uh, you know, choose a deep fryer wisely. Um someday maybe I should invent. Someone wanted me to invent, like work on a new oven after this Benzole, but I think like a really good, I'm not gonna do this for but a really good deep fryer that that like a regular person could use.

[53:16]

In your house. In your house. Because like a real deep fryer is like so much better than the one you get in your house. Yeah. Make like what like the home version of a browster, like the in the West Coast.

[53:28]

We have those like deep fried chicken places where it's a pressure deep fryer. You know, you cook the hood and throw the chicken in. Yeah, I met the guy, I think did he die? He's still alive. Anyway, speaking of died, the guy who invented G.I.

[53:38]

Joe died. We could talk more about that later. Uh anything else next week? What we'll talk about next week. Oh, next week we have Richard Blaze coming on.

[53:45]

So in any sort of Richard Blaze questions you have, uh, you can uh dial in. Thanks for coming. Thanks, guys. Thanks so much for showing up. I had a good time.

[53:52]

Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, heritage radionetwork.org.

[54:20]

Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at heritage underscore radio. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. Driving conversations to make the world a better, fairer, more delicious place. And we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you. Want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community?

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[55:22]

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