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Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from like roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from Roberto Pizzeria in Bushwick. Not joined as usual by Nastasi De Hammer Lopez. She is even later than I am. She's on her way.
She got pulled into a meeting. Now let me ask you something. That sounds bogus. Dave in the booth. Let me ask you something about a meeting.
What's the one time during the whole week where you know you shouldn't be planning a meeting? When you're doing your podcast? That is correct. Also, who gets pulled into a meeting? Don't you have to schedule a meeting?
Well, not in the old days. In the old days, the boss would just come by and be like, well, hey, come into my office. But now that everyone like commutes from home and has like all kind of like, you know, responsibilities dribbling out of their ears and side jobs and crap. Now everything has to be scheduled. I I drive Uber.
Yeah. Oh, speaking. For real? Yeah, though. Uh lower at the bakery, yeah, of course.
So long. I gotta I gotta put my kids through school, so you know, Uber at least like three nights a week. The person uh flexible at Kids of Feedman. Well, no, it lets you. Hold on, I got I gotta introduce you guys.
First of all, I'm getting old. First of all, I'm getting old. Maybe it's time. I'll just say. Sorry, no, no, I actually sorry, I meant to say Lyft, not Uber.
So uh we have Jim Leahy, uh founder, owner of the Sullivan Street Bakery. Uh and I guess kind of and part-time lift driver. And I would say, would you say like can you just give me five stars? How many different Sullivan-esque bakeries are there now in New York? Oh, Jesus.
I never, I mean, I haven't really given any. How many direct offshoots of you are there? Well, I mean, in terms of the other companies that like that I kind of influenced, if directly or indirectly. All of all? I don't know.
Um for those of you that don't know, and also, uh, he's not look, Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink is here. Hello, Peter. And not no longer just uh punching bag Peter, but Papa punching bag. I want everyone to know out there that Peter Kim is now a father. Yeah.
First time, first time father. That's a pretty cool rain stack, man. Yeah. Uh by the way, Jim, you have you okay? How many kids you got, Jim?
Oh, I've got three. Three. All right. So uh, you know, Peter, only one. Why don't we?
But whatever. Uh point is, is I feel I can no longer insult Peter in the same way because then I'm insulting someone's dad. Right. And that's like, that's not cool. Right.
You know what I mean? But you never seem to bother mind your kids seeing you insult me. I remember you I remember one of the first times I hung out with Dax, he came over to me and said, Peter, why is my dad so mean to you? You know, I didn't know exactly what to say. Why don't you tell him the truth?
I deserve it, Dax. Dave's kind of a walking do as I say, not as I do. Exactly. He was just lambassing Stas for coming late. That is a freaking lie.
First of all, that is a lie. I take and I receive. Oh. Like I like unlike Trenton, a city of Trent. Oh.
Uh no, but I mean, in other words, like I like I give people crap, but I also receive plenty of crap. True. Yeah. And I take it with, in general, with good humor. The only people I don't take crap uh in use humor from is people who won't who won't receive it, who won't let me know.
Like Jeff Bezos. No, Jeff Bezos turns out like his minions have been kind of a good sport about the whole thing. They haven't fixed our problems at Amazon, but they've been kind of a good sport. All right, listen. So what are we talking about today?
So Jim has uh came out at the end of last year a a new cookbook, the follow-up to his what is it, blockbuster success, the original one? Yeah, I guess. Like the like blockbuster? I would call it blockbuster, yeah. Nucle nuclear success.
Yeah, well, it was like uh for a bread book, like the m like the best selling like bread book that like you know in a long time that's well I don't know about that, but it it did it did stay on on the Amazon list for quite some time up in the in the top part. But you know, it's uh I think more than the book itself. I think it's it's the method in the book has been imitated, I think, by no less than 12 other authors. So I'm you know, I'm just a s I I've published the first book, and then uh, you know, there were other books that came out, you know, trying to popularize the same method. Yeah, well, uh for those of you that don't know, uh uh Jim and I shared an editor.
We had the same editor. Yeah, and then typical American fashion all claimed that they kind of like were like it was their idea. Well, no, but so yeah, well, no, but like so our our our editor. The no touch method. No, our our our editor, Maria Guarnicelli, who has since retired, so I didn't get to finish my second book with her.
Um anyway, she came up, right Where Where was the the soundtrack for the applause when you said that? I think he doesn't know her, that's why. So like um there you go. So the uh anyway, so she I'm sure she's lovely. So Family Show, remember Family Show everyone.
So she uh she came up. I just I'm just reminding Jim Leahy, who you know, we have similar foul mouths, it's just he's not used to being on the radio show, and so that's all. I was mentioning in advance. I've I've toned down my my my use of foul language. Why?
I don't know. I just Peter Kim has a kid now. That's right. Maybe that's why Peter Kim, also a foul-mouthed individual. Peter Kim, a habitual line stepper.
So if you take it right, if you if you take like a conversation right up to the edge of propriety, he'll just step right over that line. Oh, yeah, the pot call and the kettle black. I used to be known for that. Yeah, no, I'm the line rider, Dave. No, you man, you cannonball across that line.
I do not tiptoe, I do the toe across the line. No, no, no, no. I jump, I'm not shepherd, you are called shouldering a couple of things. I jump over all the dash lines that people are afraid to go over, but then there's these hard lines that then Peter like goes right over the cliff on. Right, right.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, like I go over the yellow line and he just goes onto the platform to use a subway reference. I'm missing so many metaphors right now. Anyways, so the what Marina Guarn Shelley, the editor, like this, the whatever what do you call the thing under the title? The tagline?
What do you call it? Subtitle? The subtitle? Yeah. Was no no need, no something.
And then here's no work. She added the that was her idea, right? Or is that yours? Yeah. No work.
And she's like, that sold eight jillion copies of that. But we were like, I can make this kind of bread with no work. No work? I can make this bread. And they're like, so you sold a million copies of that.
Yeah, well, I I it the I did get my first royalty check, which was nice. Nice. You need to come up now with the no-brains method. Someone who's really dumb can make it. What do you think?
I think there might even be a no need for no need bread for dummies at this point. Really? No. So so for those of you also that don't know, uh Sullivan Street Bakery, when did you open? 90.
We're 24 years old this year. What does that mean? 1990, 94. So I moved into the city right then. Uh like that's right when I moved into the city.
It was brand new. And uh my wife and I were in grad school, and the bread, cheers. Cheers, congratulations, Peter. Thank you. Congratulations.
Uh bread in New York City, and I think I've said this on the air before, uh, was freaking awful. Like the bread in New York City was an embarrassment. In fact, like one of the reasons to travel to Europe and other places was that they had decent bread, and our bread was garbage. And by the way, the impression that all Europeans still to this day have of America is that our bread is bad. And not to, you know, pump you up any more than you need, Jim, but like when I first went to Sullivan Street, I was like, holy Christ.
I was like, you know, someone cares about their bread. They're focused on a specific style, they care about it. I remember you used to at the at the front counter, you had all those pizzas, like Bianca and everything. I had to thank all the staff from stopping me from putting in an ATM machine and uh some soft serve ice cream. Uh at the time?
Yeah, you know, I was I just wanted to take it in all these like you know, typical directions. The bread, the bread, the bread. Oh, the typical bread zombie. The boars head display, you know, all that. Everyone likes a boar's head display.
But thankfully, all my employees were like rallied against me saying, no, you have to keep it really traditional. Right. And so uh also at the time he had these things that were you know called pizza, like Bianca. Did you did you do the potato one as well? You did the potato one.
We did, yeah, we did like the typical pizza that you would get from a bakery. Right. But Americans were like the only difference is in Italy where socially the bakery represents this it's like this daily necessity and also it represents the kind of like thrift like the the cheapness of bread in Italy really matters. It resonates with people the they feel the bread should be inexpensive but there's this deep tradition and culture of method methods and techniques and forms and all this other stuff. But in Italy the bakers would use to make like a potato pizza the the crappiest oils and potatoes and they don't necessarily like cherish back then.
Right. But now but now if you go to Italy you see that you know a lot of these forms that were maybe not front and center but popular have become even more front and center. You put the song Cherish in my head now. Yeah so James actually inspired a whole new kind of pizza in Italy too on top of everything else in New York. Wow because Peter's just being a Peter's just being a Diago I'm not trying to imply that's but you know you can see there are certain forms that have been constant.
I'm not doing anything new I'm just doing I'm just doing like a my rendition my version of something that I ate in Europe basically when I was a wee one. How do you feel about all the maison Kaisers that have cropped up everywhere around New York City? It's crazy. I think it's amazing that uh, you know, that there's obviously a market for that for this market. I mean, it's uh a very uh French approach.
I I think it's encouraging to see. Yeah. Um I don't know, you know, from an operation standpoint um how they could make money, but but if they do, then great. Um I also think um just because I know how expensive some of the real estate is and also how much sales are required. However, most of the companies that come in in this format, like you see all this sort of this proliferation of like new coffee companies and Bluestone Lane and Joe and the Juice and all this other shit.
Like hey, stuff, family show. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Being rolled out, and you realize it's it's just kind of like investment money and investment groups and uh uh people trying to sort of capture this sort of ever changing shifting market. Um it's almost like um you really think it's that I think it's people hate their lives and they like food. Um, we we we now we're we've become a we we have expectations where we had less before.
We have much more expectation now about how things should be. I mean, the the diner is the old you know, I mean, I I mean in the golden days in the golden days of Yelp, you know, when it when Yelp mattered. They had a golden day? Well, in the beginning when people would like you you'd you know, one I remember when I opened Co. ten years ago, which I recently closed, that, like that was so important to see to kind of follow your Yelp feed, if you will, and see what your ranking and your rating was.
But then as time went on, it like everything else in this uh world in which we're living, it became kind of kind of corrupted by bots and became became corrupted. Well, it was already this golden age of well, I'm gonna say golden age. It's all the trip advisor now. No one doesn't know. We're still at the second inning in terms of these types of uh services.
I mean, pretty soon Robert's is gonna be hiring wait staff from the basic Uber version of waiters that come in and and basically I'm here to work in your restaurant as you're a waiter. They told you this, or you're looking for it. No, but eventually what's gonna happen with technology is it's gonna basically envelop us. I don't know, maybe we're almost there. I mean, we we know we've got like maybe a finger sticking out of the envelope.
I don't know. You know, and we know and we know that there's sunlight because we can feel the warmth on our finger, or it's maybe a I mean, I'm as pessimistic someone's nose or something. I'm as pessimistic as the next fellow, but I mean pessimistic there are people who will pay like why people every once in a while try people try to bring back the automat, right? And and honestly, if the food that I'm gonna get is garbage, I'd prefer it to be a zero human being interaction. You know what I mean?
But I think there's always gonna be a market, and let's be honest, because we make very little in this country with our hands anymore, right? And you know, to the extent that we do make things here, they're made by robots because that's the only way to do it, like economically. To that extent, there's millions, hundreds of millions of people in service jobs that should have no business being in service jobs because they don't care about other human beings or about service, right? And so you don't necessarily want to interact with those people because they don't want to interact with you. But I think at the high end, there's always going to be a market for a human interaction.
One where you actually like like, and to use your word from earlier, cherish the interaction. Well, it goes back to the mission of hospitality, which is one of hosting, one of welcoming, one of kind of curating for someone an experience. I mean, that uh it's it's a it's a form of embrace, not just with with words or you know, plates or dishes or or styles of cuisine. It's I mean, that's ultimately what hospitality is about. I mean, for me.
Um, you know, I mean the best designers, the best chefs, the best uh, you know, uh, I mean, it's it maybe on on a certain level for certain operators, it gets easier because they have access to so much resource, but it doesn't mean that they're gonna succeed. It doesn't mean it's gonna necessarily resonate. It's not like bad design. But it's not like there's an there's an algorithm now. I'm sure there is already is um a bot that studies you know the algorithm of what the next type of food concept or food trend is gonna be based on you know an algorithm of no, yeah, there's big money in that.
Yeah, but I'm saying it's it but at the end of the day, why the f would we we we why why the f uh Faro salad would we wanna would we want to worry about that right now? Yeah, at the end of the day it's like you know, I I I wake up in the morning, I I I go to my little coffee bar, which happens to be downstairs, and you're like, and I own it. Okay, but like it has I say, the the mediocre food, mediocre design, mediocre environs, top-notch FOH service, good experience. Well flat across the street. But then again, you're also like there's a whole army of people who know how to make coffee art and how to pull shots.
I mean, there's I think there's even a uh an a employment service that kind of functions like Uber for coffee bars, where I own a coff I own like ten coffee bars and I'm missing a a team member here and a team member there and a team member and and there's this sort of like circulation of voluntary baristas. Now according to David Schomer, that's your first mistake, owning ten. He's like own two, maybe. Well, I mean again, it's like w what is it there is this sort of like desire or reach in our culture right now for grandness, for bigness for people, it turns out like money. Find the you know, the the uh guidance uh missile guidance uh arms contractor, investor dude who needs to kind of launder money from uh Israel or whatever.
You go so negative all the time. No, no, or wherever, or from uh Germany. No, they could be laundering from anywhere. I'm not saying Israel. Yeah, no, yeah, not I'm not I'm I'm very pro-Israel.
I love Israel. I really thought lost the thread here. You want to take a call? Yeah, call her, you're on the air. Germany, Switzerland.
Hey, hey, Dave. Hey, hey, how are you doing? All right, what's up? Hey, I've got a rack of beef. There is cut from like the rib primal.
Um, and I was wondering if you had any advice on low temp or uh other unique ways of cooking this thing. I know there's not a ton of meat on there, but uh just curious to hear your thoughts. So you cut the you cut the ribs off of the ribeye. Did you did you cut the whole bone off so you have the whole thing, or did you cut the short, did you cut them short and left the bone on the rib. I no, I got the whole thing.
I didn't do it, but it's like the big long rib rack with all the meat in between them. Yeah. What what uh what grade level is the meat? Do you know? Probably choice.
Choice. That's a really I like I kind of like that word choice as a word. Choice. Choice. Uh I actually like that word better than prime.
I don't like that. Choice. Amazon choice. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, choice.
Anyway, so back to your problem. Uh what I would do is look, the honest fact is is uh what what what access do you have to the out of doors? Uh I can get to like a Weber uh where I could smoke them or something like that. All right here. Well, here's what I would do.
I would just, if you have a bag, typically what I do is I low temp everything. Uh I would if it's tender enough uh as is, which it sounds like it is, I'd throw it in the bat in a bag with some uh with some olive oil. If you want to put some spices in it, whatever, you can salt it or not. I'd add pepper at the get-go. It depends on how long you're gonna let it go.
Then I would cook it at um I'm uh looking in my hands at the size. I would cook it at 55 degrees Celsius for in the area of an hour, hour and 20, because you're not trying to tenderize it that much. You just want to guarantee that it's that whole level. Then I I would let it cool down. You can let it sit out, whatever, uh, because you're gonna you know, grill the hell out of it later.
Then fire up your grill hot. I'm a huge uh fan. Everyone's all about control. I detest control in in all things. I like temperature control on temperature controller when you're going low, but when you're going high, go high.
Just go high. Dave Dave is a surfer. It's like go high. Always go high. He's a flame surfer.
It is true. So, like my the way that I've been cooking in advance for the book that I have coming out that I'm working on. With the butane bottles. No, no, like so. Literally what I do is because I have a lot of extra wood, so I just try to make these maximum size fires to it imitate almost in a horizontal fashion the flame intensity you get out of a tandoor.
And I create what amounts to a funeral pyre in inside of my relatively large grill, because I have a cowboy, you know, grill, and I have infinite wood at the house. So I make these big fires. Infinite wood. Oh, Jesus, Dave, you had to go there, man. So the uh so anyway, I would go, I would go uh I would go high high heat on it, and then I would just put put them off and on.
I would put it on for depends on how high your flame is, between 45 seconds and two minutes, pull it off for about three minutes, back on, bop, bop, bop, until you get the crust that you want. And that way you can shift everything off and on your grill until everything is done. So I tend to, I tend to be nowadays of the instead of trying to regulate the heat, I just regulate the amount of time that it's on the heat. Very rare that you don't want a nice crust on the outside of your food. And just by taking it off and on, you will lower the average heat input into the middle of the meat, so it's you're not going to overcook it.
And you every time you apply it to the high temperature for even short periods of time, you will you will make a better and better crust on the outside. So that's typically what I do. So for something like you have at the level of heat I use, it's probably two times on at uh at a minute aside, and that's gonna be like real nice and charry on the outside. But again, like you're you know, for me, that's like putting it inside of uh uh a a kiln, basically. If you have a less intense flame, you might want to do it three times but just if you're gonna do it a lot of times make sure to rest it uh in between this is how in a tandoor you can have a juicy well they also marinate and beat the crap out of the meat but this is how you can have uh you know not overcooked viciously but have a nice outsize by off on off on off on and that's kind of what I would do but I would always ensure yourself with the low temp ahead of time this way there's no such thing as under your only mistake is to go uh over it's not that much extra time because honestly you know unless you're some sort of freak show you're probably prepping at some point during the day so throwing in the back of the thing or you could even prepare the day before yeah yeah it's not gonna hurt you it's not gonna hurt you not gonna hurt you that's what I that's like what I would do and then also it gives you more time to send out handwritten invitations to your friends.
Yeah the good news there is if you also if you need to make some chicken or for somebody else also you you don't even need to low temp the chicken because it's so thin you don't need to low temp the chicken get by thighs right by chicken thighs pound the chicken thighs out real relatively thin uh don't bones and all I remove I always remove the bones and the little thing of cartilage. So if you buy boned if you buy people if you buy boned chicken thighs please remove that one nasty vein that they always leave in and please remove that little piece of cartilage on on the bone that for some reason that a hole can never uh clip off for you. So remove that little cartilage knuckle because it's unpleasant. Are you c are you are you calling my friends a holes? I am uh salt it but don't do anything else uh salt it, pound it thin between two pieces of cellophane.
Then I do a classic yogurt, lemon juice, uh pepper, garlic, and green herb of uh green herb of your choice and maybe a spice of your choice and a little bit of sugar. Not to make it sweet, a little bit of sugar. That's kind of the marinade that I use uh and some oil. I add extra oil. And then you just I put that in a zippy, or if you have a vacuum, I vacuum that with the chicken for a couple of hours.
That'll tend to uh that'll tenderize it. The acid in the yogurt and the lemon juice will tenderize. I'm a firm believer in the if if you're gonna marinate chicken, that it be brief. Yeah, not that long. Not that long.
Otherwise, the texture of the meat becomes like fucking nasty. Hey, family show. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I warned you like twice. I hate that.
I get so like you ever go to those restaurants where they overmarinate the meat, it's almost like like leather. But remember though, you're over over marinating like thick cuts of meat is like hyper problematic. If you pound it thin and you're gonna do the next thing I tell you, that it's not quite as bad. Then grill at infinity, right? Like just like like real flat, off on, off on, off on.
Here's the other thing. I don't baste with oil in between because I'm a lazy weasel, so I spray pam on it in between. So like I'll pull it off the fire, spray pam on it, and throw it back on. You fuck. I'm telling you, man, when you get old, you get lazy.
So it's like I was saying before, like now that I like now that I've I'm 40, whatever, what am I, 47? I realized I need to buy gears for my bicycle. Like my whole, I've been like, I don't need gears on my bike. I don't need a freewheel. I'm not a lazy man.
But you know, going over the bridge shit, and I'm like, you know what? Maybe I could maybe I could use a gear on my bike. Maybe I could use, you know. If if you can always use a gear. You did come in pretty out of breath.
I live in Portland and people here, they go crazy over their fixies. And I think honestly, people who eschew bike gears, they're just dumb. They're just dumb. Wow. I like that strong statement.
I'll take. But here's the thing. New York City, here I'll tell you why I have a fixed gear bike. New York City is by and large flat. We have one decent hill in the 90s somewhere up by Kitchen Arts and Letters, the bookstore.
We have and we have a couple of bridges that have a kind of a decent incline. But otherwise, we're pretty flat. And um the problem with New York is is that uh my bike is stored in my closet, and so my derailleur kept on getting whacked out of uh whacked out of adjustment constantly. And so, because like to ride in New York, I don't know what it's like in Portland, but to ride in New York, if you're gonna actually lock your bike outside, this is way before City Bike, the chain was heavier than my bicycle. And it took also like it took like 10 minutes to properly lock it and unlock it, and you would enfilth in yourself every time with the chain.
So I'm a huge fan, Peter Kim is uh as well, of bringing your bike inside with you, which means for me a folder, right? But the deraillers kept on getting annihilated, and I was throwing chains constantly on the street. Like I'd be going down the street, you stand on the pedal to get going off of a light, you throw the chain. The fifth time that happened, I'm like, no. No, no, and so the question was am I gonna go to a single speed freewheel?
No cursing. I was gonna go to single speed freewheel, or am I gonna try the fix-y? And I was like, you know what? I'll try it. What the heck?
And then like I just haven't changed it since. It's been like, you know, 10, 12 years or something like that. But I I think at my time in life, I'm old enough that there is like it's just it is, as you say, stupid to not have some gears on that thing. What do you think of the Archie Sturmer uh like uh hub gear shift system? I've never used one.
They're not they're not really very efficient though, right? I don't know a thing about that. I just know it sounds like you got a good reason. Here in Portland, we've got hills, and honestly, people who are stuck in up those hills, sweating bees. Yeah, no, there's no point in that.
Hey, do you do you guys have bike thieves there? Oh, yeah, it's terrible. Probably not as bad as New York. Bike thieves. People that steal people's transports.
You know, but like it you don't know. Well, like, first of all, you don't know what that bike means to somebody. I can think of one thing worse. What? People who steal your musical instrument.
Oh my god, yeah. Yes, that's horrible. That's vicious. You know, there was a rash of like double bass thefts recently. I heard.
Yeah. Yeah. No, if you steal somebody's livelihood or somebody's form of artistic uh expression, like that's when I wish there was a hell for you to go to. You know what I mean? Anyways.
Did I answer your question about uh the ribs? But if there's a hell below, we're all gonna go. On off, on off. Make sure they're cool down. Let them come down to room temp.
Don't put them at 55 on the grill, or you'll be ruining Christmas. Uh unless you don't celebrate Christmas, in which case you'll be ruining the holiday of your choice. Uh yeah, but uh but tweet us, uh tweet us back. Let us know how it worked out. Okay.
All right, I got a uh well, let me let me answer one of these questions so I can actually say I answered a question that was uh typed into it. All right. This is from Chef Dante Martinez in Seattle. Uh so this is a West Coast program, apparently today. Uh I'm a chef in Seattle, and I have a very small kitchen.
Uh and the Twitter, if you want to look at the kitchen, is at the cottage uh baffle, both or botel. T H, but both or botel. Not brothel. Yeah, I think it's a typo. It's supposed to be a brothel.
You guys are the worst. What the heck is it with you people? Always in the gutter. Uh so uh chef has no gas. I use portable induction, sous vide, or as my relatives say, Suze vide.
Sous-vide uh and an oven. One of my hit menu items is my sous vide jerk chicken. Jerk, jerk. People, uh I whenever I see the word jerk, I have to say jerk that way. Why?
Because Dax also Dax also does it. Jerk. Anyway, uh, so he calls me that sometimes. He's like, Dad, don't be a jerk. You don't think the word jerk is really cool the way the K hits?
The J and the K? How old is Dax? He's 13. Uh-huh. And same mental age as me.
Dad, you're a jerk. Jerk. Jerk. Uh yeah, but although Booker calls me a jerk and honest more than Dax does. Like when he means it more than Dax does.
How old is Booker? 16. Okay. Yeah. He also calls me an idiot on a consequences.
That's normal, though. Fairly regular basis. Do you remind him that's a normal thing? Uh no. You should.
You should actually remind him that if he doesn't, then there's something seriously wrong with the universe. It is completely the way it's supposed to be, as just as you probably said the same things, or at least thought the same things, but weren't able to say them because it was a different time. Yeah, you weren't allowed to say that crap. You think kids should say that now though? What?
You think kids should be allowed to say that now? Um it's not a matter of whether they should. It's it's it's acknowledging the fact that they do. See, there's a big difference here between and can and can. Big difference here between Asian families and non-Asian families, too.
Well, I think culture. I never talked back to my parents ever. Ever. I would get smacked. Yeah, I didn't either.
I mean, yeah. And then I'd be shocked when my friends would like, yeah, call their parents stupid or whatever. Like, just out of the question. Good times. Okay, uh, so back to the question.
All right, so people people rave uh about Chef Martinez's uh jerk chicken, and it is good, but I want to take it to the next level. I would love to smoke the chicken with pimento wood. But it's pimento, by the way, pimento is allspice tree, right? So I've never seen the wood. Right.
Are you a fan of allspice people? You like all spice? I like allspice. Some spice? Allspice.
I like all spice. Yeah. Yeah. Jamaican pepper. Yamma.
Yeah. It's also known as Jamaican pepper. You got your allspice, your pimento, there's pimento tram, the liqueur. There's I like allspice. Anyway, uh, I've never had the, I've never used uh the wood.
So anyway, I would like to smoke with pimento wood, but it's just too dang expensive to import into Seattle. My question is is there a way to get the essence of the of the wood, that particular wood, into the jerk marinade. If I were to buy some wood, I have it imported. Could I capture the essence of the smoked wood into an oil or liquid? How would you solve this problem?
Uh thanks, uh Dante Martinez. Okay, here's the thing. Uh I looked it up, and dang, that stuff is expensive. Uh real expensive. Um, there is a Bradley.
First of all, you have a couple choices here. You can um you can par smoke stuff on the wood. For instance, uh, you can do liquids, liquids that are a little bit tackier, tend to take up smoke better. So people will smoke like, for instance, barbecue sauces and things like that. I looked up online, a lot of people are uh smoking like the un like onions.
So if you have a lot of onions in a sauce, like barbecue sauce, for instance, they'll cut up a bunch of those, smoke them, and then uh blend that into this into their sauce to get a smokier flavor. If I was gonna do it, I would probably do the sauce. You I don't think you're gonna find a liquid smoke. Maybe you will, I was not able to, that is specifically uh pimento wood, right? I also looked up, and it is not that expensive to buy um there's two there's two things I saw.
Bradley Smoker, which is you know, the Bradley smoker, makes these uh these pellets, these um, these like you know, pucks, these pellets. They have one called Caribbean wood, but I think they're liars. I think what they do is they put all spice the spice into uh mesquite chips, and I don't know whether all spice the spice and pimento wood the wood have similar smoke profiles. So I would test it, but since you probably know what you're talking about, since you've used it in the real life, you know, your mileage may vary. But there is someone who sells um pellets of pure, I think pure it said pimento wood, and it is quite pricey.
It is uh was sixty dollars or seventy dollars for 20 pounds, so it's like three dollars a pound or something like this. But you're burning about in a pellet smoker, you're burning about a pound to a pound and a half an hour, and uh you're not gonna smoke your sauce if you have it in lots of trays, and so you have tray, tray, tray, tray, tray, tray, tray in a smoker. You're not burning that much. Let's say you smoked your sauce for three hours, your marinade for three hours. I think you could get a good amount of flavor into that, or if you're doing the onions, you could do even less, probably like 45 minutes, and you can get a good amount of flavor, and it's costing you between three and six dollars an hour.
So the question is how much sauce can you load in to your box and then just factor out your cost that way. But I think that's probably the way I would I would I would do it. But I don't know that you know, I don't know that you're gonna find any commercially available. I mean, if you went to a flavor house and you're like, I'm making a jerk uh saying fake this smell, they would do it. You know, how accurately they would fake it, I don't know.
But yeah, I think you you could probably do it for fairly economical price the real way this way. That's what I would do. Because those smokers aren't that expensive, and you can jerry rig one if you can't, you know, can't buy one. What do you think? Yes, no, yeah, yeah?
Yeah. Plausible, yeah. Alright. We'll take a break, come back with more cooking issues. This episode of Cooking Issues is brought to you by Bob's Red Mill, an employee-owned company that has been offering organic stone ground products for decades.
Dave, we have a question from a listener about Bob's paleo pancake mix. Michaela wants to know if she has to make pancakes or if there are other creative ways to use it. The ingredients are almond flour, arrowroot starch, organic coconut flour, organic coconut sugar, sea salt, cream of the cream of tartar, and baking soda. No, so this is basically a not this is an ingredient mix that you could use similar to bisquick, but in so anything you would use bisquick for, but you want kind of a gluten-free slash uh farmed grain free uh kind of a recipe, you could substitute it out for. I mean, I don't know how many cave people were making pancakes.
It seems like not kind of a cave person thing to do, but yeah, any one of those, it's basically a bisquick sub. If you want to experiment with paleo pancake mix, go to Bob'sredmill.com and use the code cooking issues. That's one word, all caps cooking issues for 25% off your order. Well, the jerk store called. They're running out of you.
Nice. Alright, so I didn't wait. So I got a couple things I gotta get to real quick before we do anything else. Do we have any callers? Not currently.
Okay, so tell me about the what's new about the new book? What's different about this book as opposed to the first book? It's kind of a guide to making sourdough at home. It covers a lot of the breads that we make at Sullivan Street Bakery, plus some items that we used to make once upon a time, plus some things that we don't, just kind of for fun. It covers a lot of different techniques and methods for making and putting together dough, both no need and needing.
Sourdough used extensively through the book. Some fermentation of vegetables, which is something I enjoy doing, and something we incorporate at the cafe and uh um yeah, it's just a lot of fun. True or false. The average person who has sourdough at home, the starter is much like I was at the beginning of the show, spent and nasty, right? It's just been sitting too long, it's out of breath, it's like you know, and then well, what happens to a sourdough is that the microbes go into, depending on the the uh the state of the start of the starter, whether it's a liquid starter or a more of a solid starter, but but basically what happens when a when the dough reaches a certain level of acidity, like below 4.2, uh all of the you could say the flora, the microbes that would be useful for making bread form cysts, like shells.
Um and those shells protect the you know the organism, uh, and the organism basically stays the yeast or and and in some cases bacteria. Uh some certain classes of bacteria basically stay uh suspended until the conditions change in the substrate. Right, but they're relative, they're relative balance also gets too much. Yeah, so I mean, you could have a like globule of if it's real sourdough starter uh that's been in your fridge for like you know nine months or something, you could theoretically s cut off or scrape off all the mold and just take like a hunk of it, and it should under the right conditions. Oh so you so you're a so you for most people at home you're a fan of the of the real solid starter.
Um I actually like I think if you use a a solid starter over time that it influences the flavor profile of the f of the of the final loaf of bread. Negatively or positively or just affect differently, differently. I think positively. I think um I prefer using uh and also just for management to manage more. Right.
The average person at home wants something that they can use between twice and like 0.25 times a month, and it's going to be consistent and they can bring back to life within one day. Yeah, I mean that's that's the yeah, that's the thing. So you just have to, like everything else in life that's worthwhile, practice. And also in my book, we give you lots of different tips on things to be aware of. They're but you think for that baking schedule, a more solid starter is the best way to sure.
For sure. Because things are always happen slower in that. Uh I yeah. I mean, I took also um, you know, I you can dehydrate a sourdough starter very easily. Letting it um putrefy, literally acidify, putrefy, basically is the word.
Um, and you know, drop to an acidity of like three point eight or 4.2 or lower, but um, and then you can create a slurry, and if you have a dehydrator at home, uh you could uh put a like basically uh a a sh a s a schmear of of the slurry of the liquid on uh parchment paper and just let it dehydrate only only a new yorker thinks the word schmear is even remotely appetizing well then we well it's like more like a I think you think of bagel or something like that. Um putrefies the word that I use to describe yeah all right so you spread it out you dehyd what like the lowest lowest setting uh yeah yeah uh yeah or or like you know uh in an oven with uh with the uh like the utility light on over and something like that just something to dry it out you could even just leave it on a I mean you could leave it on uh you know just to dry out on your counter but then there is always that risk of spoilage organisms alighting on it. Hey spoilage organism my favorite kind of organism so and then how long does that take to bring back to life? Um if it's a i i i I mean I kept a starter in my freezer for after it had dried like four years. But how long does it take to make a blow like oh yeah yeah no it within within 24 hours it was it was already active just just so you could bake within 24 how many I would take the dry starter I would add it I would kind of bring it back to life in a more a wetter environment.
Like one to one or water, add some flour, put it uh put it into a like a clean, a very a very clean uh uh mason jar with the lid screwed tight. And the reason why I say put the lid on tight is because then you can see if the dough is the liquid is beginning to gas because the lid will pop a little bit, and that's always a good sign. And we've got to remember that yeasts uh the that make our beer and our wine taste good and our bread tastes good are anaerobes. They're just as happy without oxygen as they are with, you know. For folks at home, you use you rocking AP in your starter or what?
Oh what? You use an AP? An AP? A P flour. Oh no, I I only use at the bakery, we only use winter wheat.
Yeah, for home people, home peeps. Okay, we use we use a flour that we only use winter wheat. Quinter wheat. We use the um winter wheat because it it's less likely to have glyphosate uh residu uh residues on it. Um I also just like the um you typically the flavor pro subtle, nuanced flavor of uh of winter wheats.
Um you know, wheat in and of itself does not have pronounced flavor profiles. It really is, it's all very, very subtle. And uh that is when it's just as raw flour. It's only when it's fermented that you can actually coax out some other flavor profiles. Same like grapes.
Yeah, just like grapes. It's like any anything that ferments, you know. I mean, it's all about the the choice of the primary materials are are are the most important thing. So Peter Kim, I don't know if you know this. Jim Leahy hates Martin's potato rolls.
What? No, I don't. You last at a no. You were like I was like, what bread that everyone loves do you think is garbage? And you said Martin's potato?
No, I mean, but I'm saying it's a no, I I mean I'm sorry, in defense of Martin's potatoes and rolls. I'm getting a lot of people. You're kinda welcome here. We've got confirmation in the booth here that you did say that. Oh Jesus.
Yeah. I don't know, Jim. Because Dave was like, I remember that. That was true. He said that.
So so I mean they're not when you put your burgers on them. It's I don't I don't I don't want to be a bread fascist. It's not. Martin's a. This is a post-Trump thing with you.
You don't all of a sudden you don't want to be a bread fascist. Like all of a sudden. You just I'm trying to uh uh avoid embracing fascistic ideas in the age of Trump, which I don't think is a a bad thing. And by the way, Michelle Wolf was fucking genius. Hey, hey.
Hey, family show with the cursing. It's it's you can't stop us. Michelle Wolfe for president. Well, first of all, a political show, David Dave in the booth, a political show. That's all I just think I will say that she did not insult Sarah Huckabee Sanders' appearance.
People who say that she insulted her parents are mistaken. They are lying just like she does on a daily basis. No, what do you're what they're what they're admitting. Oh what they are admitting this show is about cooking. I know, but what they're admitting, this is a this is also about life, brother.
What they're admitting by attacking the comedian is what they really think themselves. So it's almost like the people who are defending her are insulting her. Yes, I get I get what you're saying. Yeah. I get what you're saying.
So they're not listening to the the actual text. Anyway, talk about that. The other thing is I don't understand, like I don't understand why people want to like expose themselves. Comedians expose themselves to being roasted because they're used to it. They give, they take.
But like to like hire someone whose job it is to skewer you, to skewer you, and then be upset when you get skewered seems Well, but the problem is is the person who is meant to be skewered refused to show up. Oh, wait, wait, wait. All right. All right, wait. What are we talking?
We were talking about bread, I thought. Martin's do it on the other hand. Let me tell you something that's true. People, the airport phenomenon of people trying to use crusty bread that they then refrigerate and make a sandwich out of it, and it's overly dry. All those people should be thrown into a wood chip.
I love those kinds of sandwiches, as you know, Dave. Peter Kim has eaten moldy egg salad out of a gas station sandwiches, which is I've seen him do it. Cast iron. Moldy egg salad sandwiches. Yeah, yeah.
It's the best kind. You don't really get the flavor of the egg until it's coaxed out by the but what type of molds. He didn't even test it, man. He's a he's a rocks and wild. It's bare bag in his mold there.
In the laboratory of the mouth. But my point being that the laboratory of the mouth. My point being that I think for a lot, especially of an American style sandwiches, the way that they're built is a soft with uh roll with not a lot of crust structure is helpful sometimes. Yeah. I agree.
But you're like, I just don't like those. No, no, I I wasn't. I I I think you're misinterpreting. What I'm what I was what I was what I was trying to express was that I think I had said it good bread is back. Bad bread is back.
Meaning that you know, twenty like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, you you know, a restaurateur or a chef wouldn't think about using a Martin's roll. Whereas now it's okay because it's become sort of like this very popularized. But you're saying it's bad. Low country. No, it's not, it's just a type of bread.
It's an enriched, it's an enriched bread. It has this. You know what the issue is. You're freaking mofad guy. It has a whole historical precedent behind it.
It's not in a vacuum. The issue is Martin. Yeah. The real issue with Martin's is that it's got a very narrow toast window. So it burns very quickly.
You have to be careful with Martin's potato rolls because it goes from lightly toasted to burnt very, very quickly. It's got plastic inside. And that's why it burns so quickly. Have you ever lit a Martin's roll on fire? It actually begins to drip.
He's making stuff up. You're making things up. Like, do you ever take a CD? Big news. You ever take a CD and you light it on fire?
Oh boy. Here we go. And then like in the in the in the the same thing. Okay, this this demands empirical proof. Yeah, yeah.
This is just not. This is this is what I think. This is what we trade our buggy as a lie. This could be no, we can we can we can actually torch up some some Martin's buns for fun. Listen, do you know what it could be it could be viral?
We could even after they cool down, we could even have bread face roll her face and burnt bread. Bread bread face was like that's one of my nicknames, breadface. No, yeah, but the bread face, she's really famous online. She's got millions of followers. I don't know.
I don't know this. Did she have a face made of bread? Listen, I'm not sure. No, no, she rolls her face in bread. Oh, I don't make sense to me.
It's a fetish. Okay. It's a feather. She's never rolled her face in the face. Is that like the stinky feet animal smashing you fetish, which someone showed me?
It's amazing. I have never seen that one. It's amazing. And I never large large animals with stone feet stepping on people. It's a thing.
But uh do you know, you know, Josh Eden shorty? I love I love Josh Eden. He's he's saying at the new bar we're gonna be ordering bread from you. Is that true? Awesome.
I guess that's true. He doesn't know this that I'm talking to you right now. Do you ever do any custom work for people if they ask for something specific? If the volume is there, yes. What if the volume is not there?
But I asked pretty please. Um I'm I'm as a one-off. Um it might be more likely that I could go in and show you how to make something. I just want I I I can do it with your bread. I can do it to your bread, but I would love like a Bianca style thing with caraway and salt on top.
Uh-huh. It's always possible. Because I like a Kamu. That's the seeds so easy. That's what I'm saying.
Seeds and salt. Seeds don't stress me out. All right, we gotta think about wrapping this thing up. Oh, so Peter, Peter. That's the title of my next book, by the way.
Seeds and salt. No, seeds don't stress me out. Seeds don't stress me out. Yeah. So, Peter, for the Museum of Food and Drink, what other than being a dad, which is amazing.
Uh, what have you come to pimp out on the on the museum? You want I don't come here to just pimp out things, man. No, whenever I ask you to come on just to show up, you're like, I'm too busy, busy, busy. So there's gotta be something you're pimping out for the museum. Well, I'm always pimping stuff, but no, I mean we've got new uh new exhibits up.
We've got the chickens, including your boy I am Samani. Uh who is? Are you Samani? Yeah, no, I am Samani, not you. So uh we've got you seen this all black chicken?
Yeah. All black chicken, bones black, meat black, feathers black, eyes black, all black. All black and black black black. Even the whites of his eyes are black. All black everything.
Yeah, everything. So uh we've got a bunch of chickens. So, you can breed. Yeah, dude, probably. Yeah, I know.
It's it's awesome. We have giant we have a giant like leg horn. Gigantic leg horn. And so like every time I pass it, I'm like, I'm like, I'll say I'll say boy. Every time I pass it, I do the I'll say, I'll say it.
Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We we've got uh we have the the Model T of refrigeration, the first domestically available electric refrigerator. Very first one. And in fact, low serial number and like unrefinished, like like pristine.
We decided to not refinish. It's not because we didn't have the money to refinish it, that was a control decision. By the way, this fridge changed this fridge changed everything. So it turns out General Electric Corporation is like, we make electricity. How are we gonna sell this crap?
And they're like, I know. We'll put a refrigerator in people's house, and then they're gonna use electricity all the time. Yeah. And that's what they did. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So that's why General Electric got into the refrigerator business because they were selling electricity. Yeah. So we got all that. We've got a lot of programs we just launched.
We have a honey tasting this Thursday. We're doing pairings with uh cheese and uh the stuff. Next week we have something with your boy Don Lee, uh looking at agave spirits. Oh, yeah. Just looking at them, no tasting.
Yeah, that's right, that's right. And uh do you still have tickets available for the uh benefit? Yeah, yeah. The gala's coming up on May 17, celebrating biodiversity or honoring Dave Chang. And and I think my new bar, I think my new bar existing conditions is making cocktails for it.
So come out and see existing conditions team. And then we have the after party after that with um Jarobi of a Tribe Called Quest. Nice. Do you know Josh Josh, our chef, Josh Josh Eden, friends with the Tribe Called Quest? Nice.
Yeah. By the way, I'm a Jerobi from a Tribe Called Quest. There you are. How are you doing? So I'm uh I'm allowed to talk about the new bar.
It's called Existing Conditions. We're opening in May on West 8th Street. So look for us. Uh, you know, we'll be there. Um and I'm opening up my bakery, reopening my retail shop on 47th Street this Thursday.
It used to be such a crap hole back in the day when you opened when you first moved the uh the uh production up there, it was such a crap hole. This is beautiful bread you brought. How long is that bread? It's really long. And and you can get this really beautiful.
Peter, you got to Instagram this out. All right, this is the long Bianca Lady in the trap moment. Oh my god. No mouth moment. Here we go.
All right. Jim, look this way. Tim. There we go. For the listeners.
There we go. In Radio Land, Dave and Jim are eating a baguette from opposite end. It's not a baguette. Actually, yeah, I wasn't even looking when I said that. That's um Oh, what the hell is this?
What is this uh open? It's a si it's like the six-foot sub of of Bianca's. Yeah. Is it actually six foot long? That's awesome.
Harvard and my can I give this to the museum staff? Yeah, of course. Nice. Just uh watch the crumbs in my studio, okay? Oh, me, me, me, watch the crumbs in my studio.
You guys have people coming here smoking the weed all the time, and you you're worried about a little bread? We're not like that anymore. Oh come on. Yeah, please. So uh by the way, these chickens are cool.
Come on, see it. Fun fact on chickens. Crumbs, by the way, are illegal. What? If if someone finds crumbs in your in your recording studio, you could theoretically be arrested for it.
Whereas little bits was little bits of gandra are okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah, just the the leaves. The uh what's that stuff called?
The uh the the Oh don't act like you don't know. Shake, shake. The tricrumbs? Shake. So anyway.
Dave on drugs would be a scary thing. Yeah, uh, you know, I think you were chilling. I'm told this people think that I'm uh high on cocaine, right? No, you're not. I can't wait.
What's what's the InfoWars guy? InfoWars Milo? Alex Jones. Alex. Yeah, yeah, Dave on drugs is Alex Jones.
I only know Tom Jones. The singer. I would love to be like that. Uh what's new Pussycat? Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Yeah, I love that. Anyway, so my point is. Sleeping Anna. What's that? I don't know that one.
Sleeping Analyya. Okay. Anyway, so uh ch fun fact about chickens, people that you will learn when you come to the museum. I'm an explorer. Wow.
I'm a human. Excellent. Chickens domesticated, Peter, for what reason? For entertainment. For fighting.
Fighting. Not for meat, not necessarily for eggs, for fighting. That's right. And it was the wild men. And they're pretty vicious when they fight.
Yeah, and we have some fighting chickens that are taxidermy. By the way, they all died of natur they all died naturally. Yeah, naturally, because a knife went through their throats. But they're prime but in their prime, they were they were. The last thing we need is a PETA loss.
Don't we all die now? Don't we all die naturally, people? But the uh the point is that uh that they were domesticated for fighting. We have uh some fighting chickens there. Uh we have lots of interesting breeds.
Come see them. Uh it's the only, I think the only display of kind of cross-cultural, cross-time, domesticated uh taxidermy that I've ever seen. Yeah. Yeah. How many we got there right now?
Like 18, 19. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
And uh we've re-jiggered uh chow, the exhibit, so come come see it, come hang out, come to the museum. Buy tickets to the gala, go to mofad.org to purchase tickets, correct? Yep. Or do you have some sort of eventbrite.snop.crap. No, no, no.
MoFat.org. Yeah. All right. Yeah. And uh thanks to Jim.
Thanks to uh Pom Jim. F bomb Jim and From Peter Kim. Cooking issues. Far from F bomb. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
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