This piece was brought to you by Roberta. Roberta's pizza.com. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. We're a member supported podcast network broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick Brooklyn. This year, we're celebrating 10 years of food radio.
For the past decade, we've been taking you behind the scenes of farms, restaurants, breweries, school cafeterias, and more. It's been 10 years, and we're just getting started. Find us at heritage radio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arl, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from you know whenever to about one o'clock for Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick Brrrrr Brooklyn.
Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, and we got Matt back in the booth. How you guys doing? Good. So glad to be back. Yeah?
Yeah. Uh so what were you doing last week? Were you having fun? I was having fun. I was eating everything I could find in Charleston.
Yeah, yeah. What do you have? Uh uh I had some pickled shrimp. That was new to me. I had some shad row, that was new to me.
Whoa, whoa, shad row, you've never had shad row before? No. Where'd you grow up? Outside of Massachusetts uh outside of Boston. Okay.
Well, you know, okay, listen. They have that up there. Like, I don't want anyone on earth to think that Shad Row is it might be a Charleston thing, but just so everyone knows, that is also part of the entire East Coast Heritage, from the bottom to the top. So we'll not let them claim it. I mean, they can claim whatever their version of it.
Was it was it was it parsley, butter, bacon or what? Uh I don't know. It was like sliced and fried. It had the consistency of liver, it was in scrambled eggs. It was very strange.
Okay. Usually, when uh, you know, the old way, this is the old way, as they say in uh Indiana Jones. Um, you know, we would you'd make sure that the shad row stays whole. Now, this is why I guess you don't do it in restaurants, because it would be expensive, right? And then you cook bacon, and then with butter, you just you you you hit it just to set it all the way through.
Parsley, butter, bacon, done. You eat it like uh, you know, the whole shad row is is like uh, well, it's shaped like a rose sack. How do you explain that, Nastasi? It's like a smile. Yep.
It's like a smile, it's like an emoji smile, and it's about, you, I don't know, like six inches long. It looks like eight. I don't know. Anyway, uh they are delicious. But uh I've said this before on the program.
I hope I don't miss it this year. I missed it last year. Shad, which is uh, you know, uh a fish that comes back in um it comes back in in the springtime to, you know, to do its uh kind of reproductive business. And on the way in, it doesn't uh eat, right? And yet, for some reason, it will hit a lure, right?
But it does like, and and I don't think anyone knows why the shad, they're just pissed off, I guess. I don't know why they because they're not eating why they would hit a lure, but they're relatively easy to catch as they run back in the streams and and the when they run back into the streams, I think depends on the local temperature. So the shad runs are earlier down south than they are up north. And there's a there's a nice good shad run that goes near, you know, where where I go up on the on the Connecticut River. Shad meat, shad meat, which it used to be you wouldn't even ever get the shad meat.
You would just get the shad row. Shad meat, I think, is incredibly, it's incredibly delicious, I think. I love it. Uh it's one of those kind of like it's on the oily side but mild tasting, so you can grill it and it doesn't get all dry and disgust. Don't you hate when you get a dried uh grilled fish and that it's like dry as hell?
That's like I love stripers, but you know, some people like like a like kind of an overcooked striper, but it gets because striper is so meaty and chunky, it kind of gets weird, I think, when you overcook it. I don't like it. Do you like that? No. No.
Whereas like some oily fish like bluefish can take a pounding on a grill and still be good. As long as you put on the mayonnaise. Don't forget the oil gets out the oil. Remember that? No.
Mayonnaise on the Oh, Jesus, never listens. She never listens, you know, ever. Uh but I think shad is incredibly delicious, but also extremely difficult to bone because they have an extra set of Y bones that go out. So there's very few people. You can go on the Google on YouTube and uh you can see people who show the magic way of filleting a shad.
Because a filleted shad is great. I'm not a fan of the there's another way some people do it where they just hack the crap out of the bones, the way that they do in Japan on those pike eel things. I that's garbage. There is a way to like the amazing thing about a well-filleted shad is that when the shad is is laying flat, it looks like a fillet, and then when you pick it up, it kind of like spreads open like like a jigsaw puzzle, and you can see all of the slices that were made into it without cutting through the skin to get the bones out. And they are a site to they're a sight to have go find it.
If you live anywhere near the East Coast, go find yourself some fresh shad that has been properly boned, cook that sucker up on a grilled tummy, you don't love it. Put some mayonnaise on it before you put on the grill. Everyone wants you to talk about what you did last night. Uh everybody meaning you. No, no, no.
Hold on, listeners. So what else do? No, they don't. If they did, if they did, they would call her right in on the chat room. They've been calling all morning saying, ask Dave about what we did last night.
Matt, you know. Matt, you know. Would I lie to you, Dave? Yes. That's true.
I got a bunch of messages from people saying, please talk about what happened on the radio show. Alright, let me tell you. So, what else did you have in uh in uh Charleston? Uh oh my God. Um a ton of barbecue.
I had a I had a rib that was heavenly, and I don't normally eat meat, so that was interesting. Yeah. Um was it heavenly, or is it just because you don't normally eat meat, you're like, damn, I should eat more meat. No, I think it was really good. So you're saying it's not just like, it's like uh I remember the time that I lost a bet here on the on the air and had to eat raw vegan for a week.
The first piece of meat I had after that, I was like, God, damn. No, because we were sitting there and having like a pile of all the meats, and the rib was really the only one where I was like, yeah, okay, this is worth it. Alright, so now what are we talking about, Nastasia? What did you do last night? So Nastasia Lopez, uh, you might be familiar with her as the hammer.
By the way, calling your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. She, I don't know how the I honestly I don't know how this happens, but she is on the somehow on the gala committee for the food and finance high school. I don't even know how she's connected to the food and finance high school, to be honest. Uh and so she's like, hey Dave, we're doing a cocktail.
I says, Okay. So we make a cocktail and then tell them what happens just to ask them when we show up. We take the subway with the cocktail. Oh, Dave's back. First of all, for those of you that do events in New York City, you'll you'll know what I'm talking about.
Events, they the load in for an event is always, and I mean always, during rush hour. And so, and and they're always in locations where people want to go. It's always like, where's the event? Of course, it's in the financial district. Or of course, it's in midtown.
What's it called? Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like the trade center. Anyway, what? Well, they do the trading.
Oh, oh, it's stock exchange. It's like, so like they're all nightmare places to get in and out of on via like normal things. So you can't, like, if the Uber, first of all, not only is it like surge pricing. Remember, in New York City, unlike LA or a bunch of other places, like, Ubers are very expensive here compared to other places in the in the country that I've experienced because I guess because they can get it, and B, in order to drive an Uber here, you still need to have what's called a TNL C a livery license. Um, you know, it's so it's not just like people who are like, you know what, maybe I'll do this for a couple of hours.
It's like people who are, you know, livery drivers. So it costs more here. And so, but and then they surge price like a mother in New York City, and you're just gonna be in that car for like 45 minutes, stuck in traffic, trying to go like not even that many blocks. So I'm like, dealt with it, Nastasia. We're gonna we're gonna go on a subway.
And she's like, I don't want to go on this subway. And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? I'm carrying all the crap anyway. I've got a case of freaking tequila on my back. I got a case of tequila in a bag around my arm, plus all of the mixers and everything like that.
So I'm going up and down the stairs. Nastasia accidentally guides us to her doctor's office instead of to the event. So I lost my mind, as you can imagine. So we're lugging this stuff around. And the mess of the thing is, we designed the cocktail, so we didn't even need to take delivery of the tequila because we had made like an old fashioned and all the work, it was like cordial, you know, spins all clarified cordial.
You know, the concept was it was flavors of a margarita in an old-fashioned format. So like they assured us there would be cold draft ice, and that you know, we would show up and we would do it. So anyway, so I'm lugging all this crap, which I didn't need the lug because the the liquor could have gotten delivered directly to the to the event. Instead, we take it to her doctor's office. The doctor didn't want the stuff, so then we had to walk over to where the event was.
I'm dying, my back is breaking off, my arms are like, you know, killing me. And we show up and what? And they're like, what are you guys doing here? And then by the way, I love all these people. I know, I know all the people.
Like, and uh, they're like, we printed a sign. And they're like, if they finally found out that it indeed we're supposed to be there, and they had printed a sign with the recipe on it. I was like, and it was on a table tent, you know, one of those plastic table tents. And I was like, because Nastasi and I never spend any time getting our table all fancy. Do you see Porch Light by the way?
Yeah. Nick Bennett, he had a fan, super fancy table. You know why? They care. Because they're no, it's smart.
We care, we're just dumb. Yeah. Anyway, so like, you know, if you do events, just if you don't have the time, if you're like, you know, Nastasian like myself, and you know, everything's done at the last second, get someone else to just bring some party favors for the table to make it look like that. Well, we didn't even have a table. Well, yeah, but we thought we had a table.
So they show up in our table tent. I'm like, uh, that's printed sideways. And they're like, no, you could turn it the other way. And they did it like three times. Every time they did it, it fell over.
I'm like, no, you can't. And then they're finally like, oh yeah, um, um, uh, yeah, so they said that the bartenders already had our drinks. Oh, yeah, that was the first thing they said. I was like, they're like, the bartenders, yeah. All three bars have your drinks and they're ready to pour it.
I was like, what was that stuff I carried on my back the whole way here? Why am I breathing? Why do I exist? Why do I keep sucking air in? You know what I mean?
And uh then they determined, oh well, they don't have it yet. So then we had to go, instead of making it, right? We had to go in the back and batch it, which it which is normal. So I was like, okay, okay, fine. So I'm not gonna get to pour it.
Nastasia's not gonna get to pour it, they're gonna pour it. Turns out they were fine. They did a good job. But in general, Nastasi and I are like, why do we, you know, what's the point of showing up if we're not personally talking to people and pouring stuff? So they'd assured us.
This is how it happens in life. You have to be prepared. They assured us that there would be cold draft ice. If someone tells you there's cold draft ice in an ex uh at an event, assume it will not happen, right? And so, like, you know, I was like, I'd already been like, okay, I'm not gonna insist on like a big cube.
I'm just not gonna do it. We built the drink to work with cold draft, and then the guy, poor guy, the poor bar manager, he felt real bad about it. He was like, We only have hotel ice. And I'm like, oh my god, oh hotel ice. And so then they I was like, Can you bring me some?
They brought it. We I like I almost cried. I almost cried. I was like, what the hell? Yeah.
Well, it ended up being fine. I is because the thing is, honestly, like once you've realized that, you know, that it's gonna be the way it is, you're just like, okay. Yeah. No choice. No problem.
No problem. You know what I mean? But we ended up having a good time. Yeah, so uh Quest Love came and spun uh some music, which was nice. Check out my Instagram.
Actually, you should put on your Instagram because you have more followers. I don't know how to do it. I'll do it. I don't know how to do it. I'll do it.
Give me your phone. No, no, no. And then there's not gonna be no images of me or uh videos of it. You know this. Well, check out my stories to see Dave Dancing.
So uh it was the uh the we actually I think we used the one with quinine in it, the uh the uh lime cordial, uh the acid-corrected lime cordial that we use at uh existing conditions. It was three eighths of that into uh anejo tequila with uh orange bitters and salt, and the idea is that you know it flavors of margarita in the in the in the style of an old fashioned. It's good. Yeah, yeah. It was okay.
And for those of you that are ever gonna do bar events, please don't be don't be like I was for you know for the first oh I don't know, ten years that people asked us to do drinks at events, right? All the way back to the French Culinary Institute. So at least ten years. For the first ten years, I was like, we're gonna do something. We're gonna do something like they've never seen before.
We're gonna we're gonna carbonate live, we're gonna, we're gonna do shaking drinks, we're gonna do nitro modeling, we're gonna we're gonna And then one time Thomas Keller came up to you and said, Are you stupid? Yeah, are you what are you stupid? And I was like, you know? Yeah, real I'm real dumb. So you do all this stuff, right?
And then something always goes wrong. It's never perfect anyway. And and it's just a complete heartbreak. And then someone always comes up and was like, Do you have just the straight booze? And you're like, Yeah.
And you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. It's like if you really want to, like, whatever. Anyway, so you know, recently I've realized you gotta bulletproof stuff for advance, which is what we did, which is why it ended up okay. Pump and dump, pump and dump, pump and dump.
Whatever. Whatever. The future. Remember, uh the older you get, the shorter your future is. Wow.
And on that note, we have a caller. Yeah, caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, this is Devin calling in again. Had a quick question for you. Uh, could I get your thoughts on the different types of salts that the uh enthusiast home cook should keep around?
Uh you mean like like okay, are you talking about like the form factors or like weird, weird salts? Uh mixture of both. Because I got like the regular uh diamond crystal kosher salt, I have my curing salts because I do some meat curing, but beyond that, I really don't have anything in particular, and it seems like there's just so many options available right now. D did you uh were you aware of the internet hoax where they said diamond crystal is going to be discontinued? I'm aware of that.
I looked into the uh Himalayan pink salt and Himalaya sounds kind of romantic, but it sounds like where it actually comes from really isn't so. So I was just looking for some clarity on kind of your thoughts on that kind of stuff. So my opinion, which is uh, you know, as you probably know, uh I'm you know, I'm kind of a kind of a curmudgeon. And so uh, you know, like I people should use salt if like specific salts if it makes them feel good, you know, to do it. But most of the time any of the strange salts, unless you are going to experience the texture of it, I you know, I don't see that much of a of a taste difference until you're getting into situations where there's a large proportion of the um of the other minerals present, there's not gonna be too uh in my opinion, there's not gonna be too much of a taste difference.
So I choose my salt almost exclusively on its texture. Now I'm not talking about there's hyper-engineered salts, right? I don't even know if they're selling it. I don't think they they don't sell it to to you know people like us, but industrially they make these hollow salts, and those hollow salts are interesting because they have the salt impact of large salt crystals but contain less salt because your tongue registers your tongue registers uh that it has like this you know big big salt thing, it doesn't dissolve in right away, so it provides that. So if you're interested in lowering your sodium, that's interesting.
I'm not interested in lowering my sodium though. So if I want the impact of salt, I will add salt. Now, diamond crystal, which you have, is of course all cook's choice uh when it comes to kosher because it doses well, much better than Morton's. I think the average person who doesn't cook doesn't understand that Morton's kosher, how like hard to dose Morton's kosher salt is compared to diamond, and how much denser Morton's is, and so this is why when people hate someone's recipe and say it's too salty, they you know they probably use the wrong salt. And furthermore, this is why salt typically you should do by weight, unless you're dosing, and why most cooks specifically write diamond kosher.
Now, for many years, you know, if someone gave me some fun salt, I would use it, and it's sh for sure true that you know, certain things like truffles. What? Except truffle salt. Do you use truffle salt if somebody gives it to you? I well, I don't think I have any.
Do you have a lot of truffle salt as well? I have yeah. That's been given in like bags. Does it give you the actual aroma of truffles? Yeah.
Most of these salts don't provide uh, like I say, uh I mean, if it's truffle salt, I mean it's got a lot of aroma on it's gonna probably provide aroma. But uh I think malden is worth the textural hit that you get on it, right? If you cook with Malden, either you're made of money, you're a freak show or you ran out of your regular salt because there's no point in cooking with it. Um the fleur de cell, I enjoy fleur de cell. Um I enjoy having a you should have good pretzel salt around if you make pretzels or do baked things because it sticks very nicely uh to things.
So I you know, you know, I wouldn't use something like kosher salt for for pretzels. Um so I would have pretzel salt, I would have malden. If you like fleur de cell, I would have fleur de cell, I would have diamond kosher, and then the rest of it, like unless you can see it. So like if you're let's say you're doing a bread service, right? And you're gonna put bread out along with, you know, depending on what kind of person you are, oil or butter or both, and then you wanna put out a dish of salt, which by the way, I think is a good idea.
Even if the butter is salted. If definitely if you use unsalted butter, put out a dish of salt. There, you know, some of the some of the interesting salts uh are nice because they're visually appealing, right? And so you're getting a visually appealing thing to go with your um to go with your stuff, and I think that's kind of worth it. But even in sprinkling, most of the times you can't see the color of a salt, depending on unless you're putting it over something that's you know white.
Um I've had some smoked salts that actually come through in use and you know they're interesting, but most smoked salts I don't think are salt uh smoky enough to really add the punch that I want versus other ways of getting smoke into things. So I'm a I'm a pretty simple guy when it comes to salt. Now, when you're start talking about adding other salts, right, especially to things like liquids, they do indeed change uh the flavor. But the the you know the the way that they do is you know very complicated. And I've never I've never, for instance, been like, you know what I'm gonna sprinkle over this meat?
Some magnesium chloride. It's just never come up I've done it in waters but I've never used it for cooking I've used Saratoga water uh they you know not the stuff that you can buy in a blue bottle but you know the the stuff that we get out of the ground has a lot of crazy minerals in it and I've never used it for cooking but I could try I could try although then I'd have to go get a lot more of it I don't feel like I've been very helpful but I don't think he's there anyway. There you have it my name is Brandon Boy co-owner of Roberta's a super duper awesome place Robert's is a very very proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network. We're also super awesome thank you Heritage now we have some stuff did you figure out where it came from someone sent us some stuff I'll read the caption of so a listener his name is his Instagram name is M-A-C-K-L-I-Nastasia is sitting literally as far away from the microphone as she can get and still be in the room yep all right so who is the who is it from and it it's not like this is the first time she's ever been on this program people how many years have you been doing this Nastasia I don't know eight a million million years cultivates her own radio style yeah her own radio style is like you know also I got hit by lie like Dave so now we're double lie double what what would you say uh yeah well Nastasia Nastasia was going it's pretty baller. It was pretty stupid.
I mean, what I did was stupid. Oh, come on. Someone says, What is this? I taste it in a kitchen. Not so crazy.
Nastasia pours concentrated lye-based detergent. That was a paint spill. Yeah, but how why would you think concentrated detergent would help with it? And why would you think that that would be good for that? I just was frantic.
I don't know. Anyway. First of all, on the sidewalk, people, and you don't even own the sidewalk. Yeah, but. You're pouring to whatever.
So she pours it on her, and then she's like, you know what? Something's burning. But I didn't think that. No, but get this. Didn't rinse her foot.
Yeah. Didn't rinse her foot. Comes back to me a day later. I look up on the internet for like what to do about caustic uh, you know, caustic chemical burns. Chemical burns from caustic things.
And it's, you know, there is not one Google hit that you can find, right? That says what to do after you've left said caustic thing on your person for 24 hours. Because no one has done this before. It's so dumb. Well I know.
What's the like I didn't know it was lower? What's the scenario? So here's what happened. I was in the desert, and I spilled something. My car broke down, and I spilled something, and I dumped this detergent on me, realized it was caustic, and then because I was in the desert and my car was broken down, there was no water to rinse it off for 24 hours.
That's the only scenario. Yeah, really stupid. Nastasia was like, well, I already took my shower today, so I guess I could have, you know, I'll wait till tomorrow to rinse this off. You know what I mean? Real dumb.
Oh, I know. Literally, no, no Google hits on this. Um, how did this work out when you tasted the lie? That's a lie. Well, that was pure lie.
First of all, I think uh back to Nastasi, so like please don't use your concentrated detergent. So you gotta remember a lot of us in restaurants are using what's called uh low temperature, uh low temperature uh what's the word dishwashers, right? Because they're more energy efficient, and you know, you don't have to have huge power boosters, which is so for a commercial dishwasher to run at high temperature, you need to eat an intensely large supply of super hot water, which takes very large kind of either boilers or electric or electric heating units to to boost the temperature up to where you need to be for that, right? So they're they take a lot of power, a lot, right? And so most people, at least I know in New York, they use chemical, right?
So you can use one of a number. You can use Eco Lab, you can use AutoClore, you can whatever you do. Ecologically, ecologically is what you but the problem is is that those detergents, right? Because they still need to break stuff down on a commercial level, they typically use things that'll break down fats and proteins, which hey, base does that, you know, not like the Bootsy Collins base, like base like lie, like alkaline base. And so those concentrated things that come in the bottle, you're really not supposed to crank those suckers open and dump them on you.
If you look, there's a little peristaltic pump on your commercial dishwasher. And when it puts the detergent in for your whole freaking load, how long does it run, Nastasi? It goes like this. Wee wee weep, and that's it. Out of that little tube.
And nostasi opens up a gallon. How long is that gallon last you? I don't know. Oh, yeah. Long time.
On constant running. Yeah. In a commercial environment, and dumps it on your leg. Don't mess around with those detergents, people. Seriously.
Yeah. Seriously. You know, it Nastasi's like, but it says it's like ecologically friendly and not toxic. Pure sodium hydroxy. Yeah, well, it's not pure, but like it is ecologically friendly in small quantities diluted in gigundous quantities of water.
Anyways. So uh I had lye, going back to pretzels, in the you knew it as soon as you put it in your mouth. So, first of all, as I've said before, label everything in your kitchen. I'll say this again. Label everything in your kitchen.
Especially if it's poisonous. Label everything in the kitchen. And when I opened it, I don't know what it is. When I opened it, I knew there was like something wrong because lye looks evil. What do I mean looks evil?
Like when we opened it. It moves. It moves. It it like it like for some reason, like it built up static. Yeah.
Unlike salt. Like salt doesn't ever build up static, right? It was it was almost jumping out of the damned core container to try to get me. Somehow, because we were cleaning everything up, I didn't think about it. I was like, but I don't know.
So I licked my finger, stick it, stick it on the thing, which also you shouldn't do. And stick it on the thing, and I put it directly on my tongue, and instantly it was like just like complete overload. You were like, I'm going to the hospital, go take care of my kids. Don't call Jenny. Yeah, I was like, ah I was like, ah I ran in and I just start throwing water in my mouth.
Like not swallowing anything. Because like basically my face under like rinsing it off. You saw the hole that was in my tongue. There's a if yeah, the blog isn't a porn site anymore. There's a photo of it.
Yeah. Maybe even if it's a porn site, maybe they kept that shot. Maybe they didn't know what it was and they kept that shot. They're like, you know. You know, more and more interesting, but you know, gonna put this picture of his tongue up.
You know what I mean? Like whoever hijacked it and turned it to a porn site. We'll keep that one. All the stuff about fish killing. Okay, wait, the ciders.
Alright, yeah. So what's up with the ciders? Uh so the guy's name is M underscore A underscore C underscore K underscore L underscore I underscore N. Can you just remove the underscores and read it? Who the hell Macklin.
Okay, thank you. At Novelson and I just finished our first Saison apple cider. They call it Pau Gasol, name for the Spanish Laker. The Spanish what? Laker.
L-A-K-E-R. Laker meaning basketball player? No, it's lowercase. Anyway. Oh, wait, yeah, he is a Laker.
Okay. Yeah, but it's not capitalized. All right. We used at Fair Hills Farms Seconds. More batches coming.
I am starting a collaborative natural foods brand as a platform for projects like this at lovely. And he dropped this off at the bar and he wants us to taste it. Alright, open it up. We'll taste it. It's chilled.
Somebody's calling you. Alright, caller. You're on the air. No. Oh, well, actually, there is there is a caller on the air.
Hey, look at the shot from Norfolk. Hey, how you doing? I'm well. Um, I was wondering if you had any suggestions for best practices in cooking venison steaks. Ooh, well, uh, this is uh wild or uh or raised.
I'll touch it. Yeah, wild, and then I was given they he didn't give me any information about the cut, just for uh probably inch and a quarter, inch and a half, thick steaks. Yeah, I mean the main issue with uh most venison is that if you overcook it, it can go dry. Uh it can go dry fairly quickly. Um so I would low temp it.
But you you don't know you you said you didn't know what cut it was? Right. Can you do does it look anything like any beef cut you know of? Like what's the size of it? Does it have marbling in it?
Is it from a larger piece of meat or does it look more like it came from like a loin or a rib area? It looks like it might be back strapped. So but it's got a good amount of meat in it, and like it's got a so you say it's got a large fat cap, but it's got like a l- it's got like a a good eye of meat on it. Yeah, definitely. Okay.
And uh how many pieces you have? Four. Four. Um but you don't know how old it was. I mean the fact of the matter is when something gets uh at least when this in Nastasia and our in our tests, is that um older meat tends to cook differently.
I would low in other words, we're you're gonna go low temp. I would go low temp on it, right? And then do a sear. The question is what temperature, right? And so um I mean, and that really depends on kind of what the cut is.
Uh in general, when I'm doing um steaks like that, I'll do them somewhere between uh somewhere in the range of fifty-four to fifty-five Celsius. Uh, and then pull them out and then and then sear them off. You just don't want to you don't want to overcook them. Matt, see if anyone on the uh what's it called on the message thing uh does a lot of work with venison and can give me some stuff. But uh, you know, when I usually do it, I'm doing it at those at those kind of uh lower lower temperatures.
I even do when I'm doing um I would do that. And and you are do you need to feed four people or can you cook one eat it and then cook the other three no I do need to feed four people we uh prematurely invited some friends for dinner yeah yeah I would I would do them at 55 uh let them ride through uh for I mean it so I mean it in the absence of any knowledge I would do it like I would do a ribeye and and I would do a ribeye by hitting 55 for about 45 minutes and then dropping the temperature to like 52 uh you know let it ride for an you know another couple of hours uh um to to make sure that if you can tenderize it you'll tenderize it a little bit and a lot's gonna depend on how old it is but if you keep it at 55 it'll toughen up and get a little more um the the muscle that you'll tenderize the collagen aspect of it but you'll tend to toughen the muscle muscle fibers more I mean can you look at it can you look at it and see whether you have a large boundary of like are it is is the is the grain fiber is it okay look back up I'm trying to be more coherent if you are looking at a piece of meat and you can see large kind of grain boundaries right around the different um like bundles of muscle fibers right then you're dealing with something that's kind of more more collagen rich and in those kind of environments uh a good pre salt letting it sit around will break up the that kind of uh the bundles the collagen that lies around the bundles and will in fact tenderize the collagen aspect of the meat, even though the muscle fibers themselves will be tougher because they'll take on more of a cured texture. Okay. So people who are cooking meats that are uh more collagen-y and you know you know more akin to the kind of tougher cuts, will find that they get what seems to be a more tender result with copious pre-salting than getting the salt off and then cooking as normal. If it is a finer fibered meat, right?
So the ultimate fine fibered meat is filet, right? Like the filet, you know, or or even like the next close, something like a ribeye. Finer textured meats like this that don't have a lot of kind of uh bundles of uh the c you know collagen bundles where the the different muscle fibers are grouped together. These ones, the effect of salting is unhelpful and makes the meat from a texture standpoint and makes the meat feel firmer and therefore overcooked. So if you look at the meat kind of on a dry, look at it on an angle, and if you're seeing kind of large grain boundaries, you know, in you know, in between that look kind of like bundles, almost like you know, like you would see in a cooked pot roast.
If you can see that in the kind of the raw cross section, then that piece of meat will probably benefit from some copious pre-salting for you know, on the order of hours, you know, even you know, a little bit longer, better, to break up that collagen and to get make it a little bit easier on the cut, and then you can still low temp it or cook as normal. But if it looks like a very fine grain, then odds are the salting is not gonna help you, especially since you don't know what cut it is. And then uh I would just I mean, if you're gonna serve it within a couple of hours, salt it, and then do the cooking procedure like I like I outlined. Is this making any sense? Yeah, definitely.
Right. Uh all right, uh, listen, um uh tweet me on uh at cooking issues. Let me know how it went. I just got a message from my listener that said, please start next episode of in sicko mode so Dave can talk about it for 10 minutes. L-M-A-O.
Have a wait. Did I talk about sicko Mode for ten minutes on the last show? No, they're the responding to your dancing to it. Well, I mean, Sicko Mode is a great song. I mean, obviously.
I don't think anybody knew that you'd be able to to do that to dance like that. I mean, listen, let me tell you people something. Dave likes to dance. First of all, I like to dance, and second of all, there's no one particular age at which your butt becomes broken. What?
Your butt was broken one time. Yeah, no, but I mean, I don't mean like I don't mean like that. I mean like for pooping. But I mean in terms of like it your funk motor does not break simply because you get older. Now you might not be able to keep it going as long as you're white.
I saw James Brown perform a year before he died, or two years before he died. All right. Booker was on my back. And it is true that James Brown was not the James Brown of old when I saw him. He was old, but he was not the James Brown of old.
But I swear to God, he could be the real James Brown for like five minutes at a crack. So I mean, like, you know, it's not like it's not like, you know, when I was a when I was a a kid, I go out on the dance floor two, three, four out. The last time I was on a dance floor for a long time. Was when we were dancing in your and when you were No, the last time was at my reunion and uh and uh you know, a a friend of mine who was there who's a doctor was like, You must leave and rehydrate. Oh, remember that time that you were dancing and you got home and Jen thought it was raining outside.
You were so soaked, and you wouldn't take your jacket off. I don't take my jacket off. I don't take my jacket off when I dance. Cause I don't. You know what I mean?
Yeah. People are like, why? I'm like, I don't know. Like, why does anyone have uh, you know, why don't you strip naked for Christ's sakes? Uh you know what I mean?
It's like, how much worse is a sweaty shirt without a jacket? And usually it's only at the end of the night that my jacket soaks through. Yeah. Once your jacket soaks through. You were the only one dancing last night.
Or our group was the only one dancing last night. Yeah, look, if Quest Love's gonna come spin some stuff, and by the way, now Questlove does it obviously he's a does a good job at DJ. Oh my god, what about the stiff arm on uh so people were trying to he wrote that in his book though? He doesn't he doesn't allow that. People would go up and try to selfie themselves hymns into them.
So they would walk up where he was spinning, and he obviously has both his hands on the turntables, and they try to like walk up in front of the DJ table and then like make it look like he they're doing a selfie with them. Yeah, but you were saying he was like stiff arming the Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it was great. Why does he not like it? Because he's very focused on the music and the next song and the choice that's the whole thing.
Yeah, but not so focused that he doesn't notice that some idiot's trying to take a selfie with him. He just doesn't like people interrupting his thing. I get that. Yeah, I get it. Anyway, so uh if he's gonna spin, you might as well dance, right?
Yeah. And he played great. He played a good although I I was interested, he played some Jackson 5 in the Didn't he? No. At the beginning.
No, Dave. Was it someone else who did that? No, he did not. Anyways, uh, which I thought was an interesting choice given I saw that documentary. I'm not gonna get into it.
That's a whole nother not a cooking issue. Not a cooking issue. Uh but he played a wide range of stuff, which I always appreciate, all the way up to, you know, Travis Scott from last year, Sicco Mode, which was a fantastic song, and uh is you know not difficult to dance to. No, you did well. Not not at all difficult to dance to.
It's designed to make well, he played the the what's I guess technically the second part of it, and that's the easiest one of the three sections to dance to. The interesting thing about that album, in fact, I think, if you if you really want to get me started on Travis Scott, I think some of it, a lot of his earlier stuff somewhat somewhat derivative of other people that you might know, or not derivative, but like in the same vein as like future or these other kind of, you know, you like future, right? I don't know anything about future. Matt, you like future? I I got nothing.
What? You're not familiar with I got nothing. Percocet, Molly Percocet, Percocet, Molly Percocet. I know we've got something about Percocet, but I don't know anything about the song you're talking about. Really?
What about F Up Some Commas? You know that song? Nope. F Up Comma. You know this?
Anyway. So like some of this stuff is like, you know, because whatever. But this album, right? Astro World. Astro World's An album.
Yeah, Dave, it's an album. Album. Hey. Hey, hey. You're making me feel like I'm not gonna do it.
You did it twice. You're making me feel crazy. Yeah. Guess what else? Nuclear.
Suck it. Anyway, so uh suck it, people! Coupon! Eat it! So, um anyway, uh the songs are kind of broken up into micro songs, so it's almost like these like cycles within cycles, which I think is kind of I never would have said that.
Anyway, so wait, well, what you said we had someone on the air. What were we talking about? We're gonna eat the cider now. No, you're you're doing the cider thing now. We're tasting the cider cider.
Oh, so I texted Dax. He said it's not a virgin. Also coupon. Coupon. You want some of this, Matt?
I'm coming in. Alright. I'm coming in! Bring a glass. It's light.
Well, it's hard to tell whether it's unfiltered because this glass is uh No, it's unfiltered. Yeah, it's unfiltered. It's got some funk on it. So what the give me the the the give me the information on this? Apples.
Um sorry. Uh shh. Tastes like it's got some oxidation, but it's not oxidized, right? So it's almost got a little bit of nutty hit on the end, but it's not over oxidated. Testics actually, it's not too acidic, which I enjoy.
I think a lot of people make their stuff too acidic. Do you get any acetic acid off of it, Nastasia? No. Yeah, do you like acetic ciders? I do.
Really? Yeah. I prefer my ciders to not be acetic. This guy also says that um he thinks you're his grandfather was your high school principal. Wait.
His grandfather was my high school principal? His grandfather was your high school principal. Who is his grandfather? I don't know. He's looking into it.
Um Breen, Cartolicchio. Oh no. Hope you guys get to try it. Currently working on another co-ferment faux rose with apples and rhubarb. Alright, well, I'm enjoying it.
You enjoying it? Yeah, I am enjoying it. I'm enjoying it. Matt, you enjoying it? Uh yeah.
Yeah. Are you waiting? Are you a cider person? I'm not a big cider person. Uh I do feel like I don't know.
I feel like a little more I would prefer a little more acidity because at the end it just kind of falls in the case. Oh, this guy's flat a little bit. Macklin Kazanoff and Ned Moshe. Okay. You like a more acidity in your in your cider?
I haven't had a ton of ciders, but I'm just tasting this drink and responding to it. The average cider made for American palettes. Your principal's name is Ed Hart. Yes. Okay.
So yeah. The average the average cider made for American palates, I think is kind of overly acidic because people want it to drink like tart apples, right? So like they'll label things like Granny Smith, or they'll they'll do things that have a high acid content, or they'll kind of uh sometimes even kind of worse jacket jacket with sugar and jacket with malic acid to make it seem more apple y, so it has more of an apple hit. Um other people will uh choose apples that taste good to eat and then when they're fermented out they get overly kind of acidic and they won't include enough kind of tannic apples. I don't know what apples they're using here, but uh it tastes like it's got a good bit of tannin like kind of structure in the back.
Yes, I saw an apples, I told you. No, that's not that's not an eye, it's not an apple, it's a style. And they say made with seconds, and seconds is a good way to make this. So what is with seconds mean? So leftover.
Well, it's apples that are too kind of blemish to use for kind of first sale. So like whether, like a lot of times you'll you'll get something that kind of bites or burrows into an apple, and it'll get a defect there, uh, but it doesn't actually harm the apple in terms of its juice. Um so you know, they're useful for uh for things like you know, for things like this. Uh they have a lower market value, so they can be used in ciders without you know incurring kind of a large uh economic penalty. But I like it.
And so uh I'm you know, I I I think it's just like drinkable. What? Well, no, I haven't answered the questions yet. Dave, it's 12. Give me 12.
That clock is round. Hold on a second, hold on a second, hold on a second. Let me rip through this. Matt, can I rip through this? I mean, good by me.
All right. Uh this is from Alex in Toronto. Yesterday, my wife arrived home from a children's birthday party with a large clear plastic bag full of slowly thawing meat. That's my next band, slowly thawing meat. Her friend's husband is an accomplished hunter, and when they're in season, he and his buddies bag Canada Geese by the dozen.
I prefer by the bushel. Uh you seen the beginning of Pat and Ever. No, get into the question. I now have 16 goosebreasts divided into Ziploc bags in my fridge. I hope they are Ziploc's real name brands.
Uh in my fridge. Not that they give us any money. They're getting suit for top now. Anyways, waiting to be cooked. They are very dark red in color and have a t uh tender texture when raw.
I haven't tasted one yet. Uh well, so how do you know they're tender? You mean they're squidgy. Anyway, uh I haven't tasted one yet, but they smell great. I've already put a couple in the circulator, different temperatures and times, 53 and 55, both for two hours.
But I wonder if you might have some uh advice for how to proceed in figuring out what time attempt to cook them out and how to figure out some flavor pairings that go well for them. Well, similar, similar to to I ideally come up with stove sauces or dishes to build a meal around so I can share the wealth. I mean, in general, I don't know any that much about goose as opposed to duck, right? But here's what I do know about cooking duck. So I would just, if it was me, I don't have a lot of experience, I would just go for the same stuff that goes well with duck, which is pretty much everything.
Uh, you know, people like fruits. People look in general, people think fall for this kind of crap, so they're probably thinking kind of like fruity compoody kind of crap. Right, Nastasia on things like duck. I guess I don't care. That's what Nastas is saying.
I guess I don't really care. Here's what I would say. I'd say all those temperatures are rather low. I would look at the fat on the uh on the I assuming there's fat on it, right? I you didn't say it, but I'm assuming it's got the skin and the fat.
If it has the skin and the fat, assess kind of how much skin and fat there is there. I would cook them. When I cooked, I'll tell you what I do duck at. I do duck at 57 for no longer than 45 minutes. And the issue uh to do is if you're gonna crisp up the skin, which of course I recommend, is to when you put it into a bag, that you before you put it in the in the water, put it flat skin side down and press it down.
Uh press it down uh so that that skin is flat so that once it's cooked and you put it into a pan, you'll be able to get that skin flat, right? So it's not bent up, so you actually can get good rendering and do it that. But I would do 57, no more than 45 minutes. Uh otherwise you can start pulling on some livery tastes. I think 53 and 55, 55 for two hours, uh you know, maybe it'll be okay at that point, but I would really recommend something like 56, 57 for 45.
Uh, that's what I typically do for duck. Uh and Shy writes in, I love tofu skin, but it's not available where I live. I tried making it at home using the traditional method of simmering soy milk and pulling the form skin with modest success. But this is time consuming, and the end product is not uniform. Could you suggest a method by which one may make a decent amount of you but with less effort?
No. Like making tofu skin is incr very rewarding. Uh, you both tofu skin is very rewarding, but it's always kind of a pain in the butt. Um, every time I've made it, I've just used the widest thing that I can get and like kind of simmered it low. And what you say about not uniform is something that I think a lot of people don't realize.
And here's a strange thing. It's been many years, like on the order of six or seven years since I last made it, uh, fresh from scratch. Uh, but the concept is is you make a rather thick soy milk. Um, some people put it uh uh in a pan over a pan so that they don't scorch it. Uh you want to heat it up to about 90 just you know at the simmer.
If you actually get bubbles in it, the bubbles will be in your skin, in your tofu skin, and which you don't want. You let a skin form, you wait until it actually attaches to the side of your pan. You cut around it, you lift it up on chopsticks, you dry it. Or not. You eat it right away.
It's fantastic, it's incredibly time consuming. And what you talk about not uniform, what I'm assuming is is that the very first skin that forms uh is incredibly different from the last that forms. And the reason this happens is because uh as the tofu, as the the yuba sets, right, you're depleting the milk from the ingredients that you're taking out of it uh tip at typically at a non-uniform rate. So the composition of the Yuba at the beginning is very different from the one at the end. The one at the end, if memory serves, it's been many years, it's kind of darker, redder uh and tastes different, but it's interesting all the way.
So I would never try to make Uba at home for a quantity. I would do it just as I do it every once in a while to taste the magic that is uh fresh homemade Yuba, because nothing else is quite the same. Um some other people wrote some stuff in on Twitter. I'll have to answer on Twitter in a uh shorter format. Speaking of uh wild geese, uh you know who you are, if you listen, stocked by our bar left me a note, which I I think I lost your contact info, but apparently you have a lot of pheasants in your in your freezer.
I love pheasant, although if you want, you know, tweet in or you know, email Nastasia. If you want me to talk about the most unpleasant pheasant experience I've ever had in Italy. What? I've had two unpleasant uh pheasant plucking experiences. Oh yes, I know this.
But the worst was actually where I didn't pluck it, where they had me try to recreate an old Roman recipe. I was with Johnny Azini doing a pilot many years ago. Time machine chef? No, no, different one. I'm not time machine chef.
It was not time machine chef. What was time machine? Well, well, since you have something to say about it, why don't you, you know. The chef comes out of a refrigerator. Dave, why'd you do that?
If someone calls you and says, Do you want to do this pilot? You know, pretty much. What did you have to do? I was just a guest, I was just a judge. I was a judge.
I did not come out of the fridge. The contestant came out of the fridge. The fridge was a time machine reference, like Bill and Ted's phone booth. But fridge. And you had a dress in the period clothing.
I did not have to. No, I did not. No, I just dressed like a person. I was a a I was the judge who knew about the history and the technology of that was my that was my deal. But this was not that.
This was we were recreating old Roman stuff, and they had me recreate this recipe where you kept the birds, you you kept the feathers on the bird, took the skin off, and then put the skin, the like the raw skin with the feathers on it back over the bird after you cooked it. But what was even grosser was is we went out and we shot these pheasants in in the in the you know out in Italy. We were in Italy. We shot these pheasants, and then they were sitting around for like you know, a day or two, and then we went to go. Uh they they needed me to to take the skin off and to eviscerate it outside, right?
And it was in Italy. For any who's been in like Italy, outside it was in Lazio outside Rome. There were like those tiny Vespo wasps, those those yellow jackets that they have in Italy, and they eat meat, by the way. And so like I'm sitting there trying to explain how to take the skin off of the pheasant and keep the skin in one piece intact and how to eviscerate it. And I don't like I don't like wasps, okay?
And they're constantly just like I'm being swarmed like a freaking B-beard of freaking yellow jackets while I'm trying to rip the stinking guts out of a pheasant on a wood stump. I don't know why the hell we're doing outside. I'm sure the Romans had an inside. This was for Time Machine Chef. This was not for Time Machine Chef.
Anyway, that was that was the most unpleasant pheasant cooking experience I've ever had. The kind of the most botched was I went and bought a pheasant with the feathers on in France from uh, you know, a gibier who sells you know the volley anyway. So I got this pheasant and I mutilated that skin trying to pluck that stuff, and there was uh my god. And then that's the one where I I ripped up the person's floor because they didn't have any wood, so I ripped up and took extra oak out of their floor and burnt it and cooked the pheasant over the oak. That tasted delicious anyway.
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That's pairing protein with fiber-rich fruit, like fresh pears. One medium pear delivers six grams of gut-friendly fiber, helping you feel fuller and supporting better digestion. No extra effort. Slice pears with yogurt, blend one into your post-workout smoothie, or just bite in. No peeling needed.
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